Checking battery status?

[Joe]

Yeah -- I'm running Slackware.. uh.. 10.1, I think?

joe@religone:~$ uname -a
Linux religone 2.4.31 #6 Sun Jan 5 19:04:47 PDT 2005 i686 unknown unknown GNU/Linux

I'm using a ThinkPad 600, and I was just wondering if theres any easy way to check my battery percentage / status? Thanks!

[rabbit]

"acpi -b" or "cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state"

[Joe]

joe@religione:~$ acpi -b
-bash: acpi: command not found
joe@religione:~$ cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state
cat: /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state: No such file or directory
joe@religione:~$

[Sidoh]

Like I said, you need to compile your kernel with acpi.

[Joe]

Like I said, you need to compile your kernel with acpi.

God damn do I have a short attention span.

How do I do that?

[Sidoh]

Look around on google... it's a pretty long process.

[Ergot]

Look around on google... it's a pretty long process.

Bull, kernel (re-)compile has gotten stupid easy since 2.6.x.

make menuconfig
Select need stuffs (this is the tricky part)
make
make modules_install
cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/NAMEGOESHERE

Don't forget to update/run lilo if you're using that.

[Sidoh]

Yeah, but that "tricky" part can take a really long time for someone who doesn't have much experience compiling a kernel.  It took me two days to get a 2.6 kernel working on my laptop, but I think that's largely because it's a new laptop and Linux drivers were somewhat hard to find and they took more configuration and setup than I was familiar with.  I had a really hard time getting ALSA working properly.  In fact, I don't think I ever got it working 100% the way I wanted it to.  I think I posted something about a headphones jack here.

Just because you can compress the process into a vague, step-by-step list doesn't mean that it's always a trivial task...

[Joe]

Look around on google... it's a pretty long process.

Bull, kernel (re-)compile has gotten stupid easy since 2.6.x.

make menuconfig
Select need stuffs (this is the tricky part)
make
make modules_install
cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/NAMEGOESHERE

Don't forget to update/run lilo if you're using that.

What folder do you do all that in?

[rabbit]

....

That's rebuilding the kernel.  You download the source and unpack it.  That's the folder you do it it..

[iago]

Before anything, try "modprobe battery" then the "cat" that was posted. 

<edit>
ron@slayer:~$ cat /proc/acpi/battery/C11F/state
cat: /proc/acpi/battery/C11F/state: No such file or directory
ron@slayer:~$ sudo modprobe battery
ron@slayer:~$ cat /proc/acpi/battery/C11F/state
present:                 yes
capacity state:          ok
charging state:          discharging
present rate:            1488 mA
remaining capacity:      4543 mAh
present voltage:         14158 mV

I don't think I have ACPI support compiled in.

[Joe]

Ron and I went through and installed Slack's out-of-the-box 2.6 kernel.

cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state works for me. I don't know what the hell a C11F is.

[Newby]

Ron and I went through and installed Slack's out-of-the-box 2.6 kernel.

cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state works for me. I don't know what the hell a C11F is.

The idea behind a kernel is you customize it to meet the needs of your box. Otherwise your kernel has bloat and un-necessary crap.

And lol, aren't you glad Windows just tells you what percent of your battery is left? FreeBSD's apm does that too.

[Sidoh]

The idea behind a kernel is you customize it to meet the needs of your box. Otherwise your kernel has bloat and un-necessary crap.

And lol, aren't you glad Windows just tells you what percent of your battery is left? FreeBSD's apm does that too.

Yeah, it's things like this that discourage me from using Linux.  As much as I like it, I can never last long using it on my workstation.

[iago]

Uhm, you realize you're reading the battery's signal directly from the kernel, right?  There's front-end programs that "just tells you what percent of your battery is left", but they use the same raw data.  The difference is, on Windows you aren't allowed to see it