I need a laptop battery monitor for DSL 2.3

Forum: Laptops
Topic: I need a laptop battery monitor for DSL 2.3
started by: vees

Posted by vees on May 11 2006,18:46

Hi,

I am using DSL 2.3 in the 'toram' mode on an old Quantex laptop (PIII Coppermine 450MhZ, 128MB RAM) and I am totally delighted by the performance it gives me. The only issue is that the applet which is supposed to monitor my battery does not work.

What is the most convient way to monitor my battery performance? Is there a MyDSL extension I should download? Can I configure the applet (I forgot its name, the transparent one on the upper right corner of the desktop)? Should I apt-get something? Is there a CLI application (I tried apm but that does not work and at boot-up I get the message "apm: overridden by ACPI" but I did not find a way to make ACPI report the battery condition).

Many thanks for any pointers,

VS

Posted by torp on May 12 2006,03:52

did you include "apm noacpi" in your cheatcode line? thats what I have to do.

torp

Posted by hs7sv on May 12 2006,08:21

That means your Laptop is using ACPI. < This thread > may help you. Good luck

Posted by vees on May 12 2006,13:44

Hi,

Thanks for trying to help me out here:

Torp:alas, I must be obtuse, but the apm noacpi cheatcodes made no difference.

hs7sv: I read through the thread you referred me to, but I did not understand it. I looked for wmacpi_1.99r7.dsl on my machine but I did not find it. Is this a MyDSL extension (I am asking because I am not in front of my DSL box)? If yes, I will simply get it. If not, can I simply copy the Perl script into vi, and create an executable to run it? Does DSL 2.3 support running Perl scripts or must I install Perl (I am asking because Python, for example, does not come with DSL, only as an extension).

Many thanks for any help,

VS

Posted by hs7sv on May 12 2006,14:58

wmacpi_1.99r7.dsl is in myDSL Window Manager Extensions.
DSL-2.3 does not support ACPI. You need to use DSL-2.1b for ACPI and battery monitoring.
battstate.pl (Perl script) will get all battery information from /proc/acpi/battery, if ACPI is running.
I'm using it on my laptop (Fujitsu LB P5010). It works fine.

Posted by vees on May 12 2006,15:41

now I am really confused. I dowladed the wmacpi_1.99r7.dsl extension as you suggested and, as you predicted, DSL 2.3 does not seem to support ACPI because when I run wmacpi from the command line I get "No batteries or ACPI not supported". But then why in the world do I get a message with "apm: overridden by ACPI" on boot-up

?

you write that battstate.pl (Perl script) will get all battery information from /proc/acpi/battery, if ACPI is running.

Does that mean that there is simply no way of monitoring batteries with DSL 2.3?! (since all ways to monitor require ACPI and since DSL 2.3 does not support ACPI)

Posted by hs7sv on May 12 2006,16:17

DSL-2.1b uses kernel 2.4.31, DSL-2.3 uses kernel 2.4.26 but no ACPI support in DSL-2.3
Please try DSL-2.1b with option: apm=off acpi=force and use these commands in aterm as root:-

Code Sample

modprobe battery
modprobe button
modprobe fan
modprobe processor
modprobe thermal
modprobe ac

Posted by vees on May 12 2006,17:15

the problem with that is that I really, really do not want to come back to DSL 2.2 as I much prefer the (otherwise fantastic) DSL 2.3. Is there any way at all to monitor batteries (without ACPI) on DSL 2.3?!