Charge!

Far from the next power outlet, many users look anxiously at their laptop's battery charge state. Although modern hardware relies on several tricks to save power, whether or not they actually work often depends on your hardware.

One option available to Linux users is managing power through the ACPI kernel modules (see the box titled "The ACPI Dilemma"). Recent machines also let you configure many components on the fly to reduce energy consumption. The small command-line programs AcpiTool and PowerTOP can help you keep track of your power demands and keep your laptop from shutting down when you really need it.

Specifics

AcpiTool resides in the repositories of virtually all the major distributions, and you can install it conveniently from there via the respective package manager. If it is missing from your choice of distribution, you can quite easily build the tool from the source code [2]. After installation, call acpitool in a terminal window. The software works in userspace, so you do not need root privileges (Figure 1). The program parses the contents of the /proc/acpi directory and converts it to a legible format.

Figure 1: A large number of options means a similar amount of information.

AcpiTool understands a large number of parameters, some of which, however, only work on ASUS, Toshiba, and Lenovo brand laptops, as well as older IBM devices. These features result from certain characteristics of the hardware, but most switches work properly on all laptops. For a list of the available options, you can type

acpitool --help

at the command line.

Info

In contrast to inxi [3], for example, acpitool is not used primarily to spit out comprehensive information about the hardware. Users are typically interested in the battery status and supported modes, and if you are battling a laptop that unexpectedly insists on running at full power all the time, information on the CPU and the thermal sensors can help, as well.

To view all the relevant data, type

acpitool -bcftv

at the command line. The software then lists the relevant information. If the output contains notes on an incomplete directory structure below /proc/acpi, this indicates that kernel modules are missing or that some functions are not supported by the hardware.

In the case of unsupported functions, you can call the sensors-detect command at the command line with root privileges.

The software is included in the lm-sensors package, which is found in the repositories of most distributions. It detects the sensors in the notebook and, if you allow this to happen, adds corresponding modules to your Linux configuration.

Battery Problems

You should pay special attention to the charge status of the battery when you call the software. Entering the

acpitool -Bv

command outputs detailed information. Of course, even the latest laptops with state-of-the-art lithium-ion and lithium-polymer batteries can suffer from a kind of "memory effect" after extended operation with many cycles, which often significantly reduces capacity [4].

This memory effect phenomenon occurs after many partial discharges with subsequent recharging. Notebooks that run almost exclusively on the power supply are especially vulnerable: The electronics controlled by the operating system automatically recharge the battery as of a specific discharge threshold. The resulting chemical processes involved in partial charging and discharging affect the voltage in cells over time.

The output from AcpiTool with the -Bv parameters gives you three important pieces of information on the battery status (Figure 2): the Remaining capacity (milliamp-hours, mAh), the Design capacity (i.e., the original maximum battery capacity), and the Last full capacity (i.e., the capacity that existed before the last charging).

Figure 2: The battery here is almost in mint condition.