Distribution: Slackware 10.0 Hardware Environment: HP Omnibook XE4100 Problem Description: I brought a new battery to my HP Omnibook XE4100 laptop once the original one became damaged. Once it was cheaper o decided to buy a generic one (4400mAH, instead 4000mAH) and the new battery works very well and keeps my PC running longer than the original one ever did. There's just one problem: I can't get the battery status from the new one and everything worked fine with the previous one. It seems an error caused by one value that is higher (or lower) than the expected from the kernel. Running under Windows XP everything works perfectly so it's not a battery itself problem. I already tried other kernels (from Ubuntu 4.10 live CD - based on kernel 2.6.7) and the problem persists. I also made an update to laptop BIOS but it didn't solve anything. Can you help me? Kind regards, Manuel Silva
Created attachment 5269 [details] dmesg output output from the error taken from dmesg. That occurs at GNU/Linux boot and each time the battery is inserted.
Please test 2.6.13-rc1-mm1
Hello! I made several other tests and I found that the battery status is read with kernel 2.6.12 but I'm not used to compile the kernel and I forgot a few things (including network) and I wasn't able to find out where network chipsets were in the GTK configuration tool ("make gconfig") so I decided to try a distro with a kernel closed to 2.6.12 and I chose Mandriva (2.6.11-6mdk) and it worked also. The only problem I register with all 2.6.x kernels (even when I was using my previous battery) is that it doesn't update battery status oftenly. Is there any 2.4 kernel with the same ACPI updates that were made since 2.6.7 or any way to compile 2.6.12 (or .13) with, at least, the same options that were used to compile the Slackware one (which is 2.4)? Kind regards, Manuel Silva
The problem persists under the latest stable 2.4 kernel tree (2.4.31). It seems to be partially solved once unplugging and replugging power cord the /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1 becomes usable to get all information about the battery. Is it reliable to use ACPI sources from kernel 2.6 under kernel 2.4?
I'm sorry, if it isnt' data corruption, we don't have the bandwidth to backport 2.6 ACPI fixes to 2.4 -- there are not enough testers. Thanks for testing with 2.6, hopefully you'll be able to upgrade for real.