Laptop Battery Meter

[sedawk]

I am using a laptop with RH 9. It is inconvenient without a battery meter when it is unplugged from AC and unknown battery power level. Is there any utilities can be downloaded?

Thanks.

 

[miblo]

Try '/etc/init.d/apmd start' to start the APM daemon.

Then the command 'apm' will show you battery status.

~Mike

 

[sedawk]

Mike,

I tried what you recommended just now. It seems not work: even I unplugged AC, after I run 'apm', the prompt is:

AC power, no system battery

 

[skiflyer]

I'm currently looking into the same issue... it seems newer laptops use ACPI instead of APM... I wish I had some answers, but I'm still researching myself... these links might help you, or you might just want to do some research on ACPI yourself...

(mostly for toshiba, dunno what you have)

http://mitglied.lycos.de/sat3000/acpi.htm

http://www.buzzard.org.uk/toshiba/tuxtime.html

-Rob

 

[sedawk]

Rob,

I checked those links quickly. To me, the impression is ACPI is manufacture dependant: I am using Dell Inspiron laptop. Do you have experience on this laptop model while using ACPI?

Thank

 

[skiflyer]

I don't have any experience with ACPI at all... just what I've been reading, a google for acpi dell inspiron has been showing a few things, perhaps if you add your model number you'll get exactly what you want.

I'm not sure if this is doable without a recompile of the kernel, which I'm just not in the mood to learn about just yet... I may wait until I see my local linux guru next, this stuff is batty.

 

[danielhozac]

A friend of mine has a HP laptop which uses ACPI. He just compiled 2.4.22 with ACPI support (he was too lazy to apply the patch to earlier versions of the kernel), loaded the modules, and after that he was able to get a battery meter. It seemed to be quite painless.

//Daniel

 

[skiflyer]

For those of you who know how to just recompile the kernel perhaps... ugh. Steep learning curve... I know there are howtos and other documents, but do you know of any good sites which might be a good beginners guide to compiling 2.4.22 with ACPI support?

Thanks,
Rob

 

[danielhozac]

Start with a working kernel configuration and edit it. The kernel comes with documentation for most of the options.

//Daniel