I already ordered a new battery, but out of curiosity I executed those commands you told me to (find /proc/acpi/battery, cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state, cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/info) and this is what I found:
cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/info present: yes design capacity: 4400 mAh last full capacity: 3334 mAh battery technology: rechargeable design voltage: 14800 mV design capacity warning: 440 mAh design capacity low: 133 mAh capacity granularity 1: 44 mAh capacity granularity 2: 44 mAh model number: DELL53LSN serial number: 678 battery type: LION OEM info: Sanyo cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state present: yes capacity state: ok charging state: charged present rate: 1 mA remaining capacity: 4400 mAh present voltage: 16748 mV Does this mean anything to you? And just to be clear this is the old, presumably non-functioning, battery. Thanks, -Pete On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 3:37 PM, Bob Proulx <b...@proulx.com> wrote: > Peter Rapisarda wrote: > > to complement my studying I decided to resurrect an old laptop which is a > > Dell Inspiron 2200 with a Intel Celeron M processor. The hard drive had > > gone bad so I replaced it > > Should be fine. My main laptop is of similar vintage. I have > replaced the battery however. > > > and purched a verison of debian off of OSDisc.com and used that to > > install debian on my "new" system. Everything works great except > > when I start up the computer i get a message that says: > > > > Time-of-day not set - please run SETUP program > > WARNING: The battery cannot be identified. > > This system will be unable to charge this battery... > > That message would not come from Debian. I believe (not 100% so > beware) that that type of message would come from the BIOS at boot > time when it runs its POST (power on self check). It wouldn't have > started to load the OS yet. > > Old machines sometimes have problems with the hardware clock because > the backup battery on the clock will have died over the years. This > can often be fixed easily by replacing the battery which is usually a > very common CR2032 battery. For a desktop with an always available > internet connection this is usually a don't-care because the OS can > set the clock at boot time from an internet time source. For a laptop > this is somewhat more important because if you boot away from any > network connection then it will probably think the time is 1970 at the > zero integer time of the Unix epoch since the clock usually returns 0. > Depending upon how you use your laptop this may or may not annoy you > or others. You can probably ignore it if you understand it. > > Old laptops sometimes have problems with failed batteries, both main > batteries and clock batteries. Different manufacturers do different > things with the main battery information. Some will report 100% even > if the battery can't hold a charge. It isn't unusual to need to > replace the battery on old laptops. > > > Is this a problem with the battery itself, or did I install something > > incorrectly maybe? If I leave the laptop plugged in it works like a > charm, > > but the second I take the plug out of the wall (even with the battery > > inserted into the laptop) it shuts off. As you can imagine this is > > extremely annooying and I have no idea what to do. I don't want to go > out > > and purchase a new battery until I'm sure that's the issue. Any help > would > > be greatly appreciated. > > I think your problem is mostly likely a worn out battery that is no > longer servicable. To know for sure you will need to look at the data > for the battery. > > Run this command and see what information is available: > > find /proc/acpi/battery > > Then print the contents of any "state" or "info" files that are shown > there. On my machine I have BAT0 and the following files. The names > of the directories may vary somewhat depending upon what BIOS and ACPI > subsystem exists on your machine. Vendors will show different units. > Pretty much every vendor will have somewhat unique data here. You > need to look at it and then deal with the result. > > $ cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state > present: yes > capacity state: ok > charging state: charged > present rate: 0 mW > remaining capacity: 70010 mWh > present voltage: 12393 mV > > $ cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/info > present: yes > design capacity: 77760 mWh > last full capacity: 70090 mWh > battery technology: rechargeable > design voltage: 10800 mV > design capacity warning: 3504 mWh > design capacity low: 200 mWh > capacity granularity 1: 1 mWh > capacity granularity 2: 1 mWh > model number: IBM-08K8193 > serial number: 107 > battery type: LION > OEM info: FLT > > This tells us that my battery is designed for 77 watt-hours but is > currently only holding 70 watt-hours. It is plugged into power at the > moment so so the discharge rate is zero. This shows a degradation > from new condition to 90% of design. It is a relatively new battery > and so this looks pretty good. But an old and worn out battery may > only show a last full capacity of 10 watt-hours or worse! > > If you post your information about your battery then folks on this > list can help diagnose it. > > Bob >
