Bug#506486: gnome-power-manager: fails to execute action on low battery condition

Rene Wagner rw at nelianur.org
Fri Nov 21 23:11:50 UTC 2008


Package: gnome-power-manager
Version: 2.22.1-3
Severity: critical
Tags: patch
Justification: causes serious data loss

Hi,

on a fresh install gnome-power-manager 2.22.x first collects statistics
on how the battery 'behaves' to create what it calls a profile. Once
created this is used to predict how long the system can be used until 
the battery runs low.

During the initial "learning phase" gnome-power-manager correctly
detects a low battery situation but then decides not to execute the 
corresponding action (warning + suspend/powerdown). At this point the 
debug log states: 

"profile is not accurate. Not doing policy action"

Essentially, it doesn't trust its statistics yet. This happens
independently of how the various related gconf keys are set.
Unfortunately, this is also true for 'use_time_for_policy' which, if
false, I would expect to render the battery profile irrelevant.

On my system it takes gnome-power-manager several days to collect
enough data for it to trust the profile and actually shut the system
down when the battery is low.

Up until that point there's no protection from low battery conditions.
The system will simply turn off. Any data that hasn't been written to
disk is irrecoverably lost.

In Ubuntu this is tracked in Launchpad #135548 [1]. A proposed
patch [2] makes gnome-power-manager fall back to percentage based 
decisions while a new battery profile is built during the course of a
certain number of apparently required learning cycles.

I've been using a version of gnome-power-manager with both
11_policy_actions_fallback.patch and 12_fix_notification_messages.patch
applied for several month - originally on Fedora 9 [3], now on Debian
lenny/sid - and it fixes the problem for me and AFAICT doesn't cause
any regressions.

I believe there's also a patch in later upstream versions of
gnome-power-manager to address the issue but I haven't had a chance to
look into that yet.

Please see if this can be fixed. It would be unfortunate if more people
lost data to this bug.

Cheers,

Rene

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-power-manager/+bug/135548
[2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-power-manager/+bug/135548/comments/89
[3] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=448362#c1

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages gnome-power-manager depends on:
ii  dbus-x11               1.2.1-4           simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  gconf2                 2.22.0-1          GNOME configuration database syste
ii  hal                    0.5.11-6          Hardware Abstraction Layer
ii  libart-2.0-2           2.3.20-2          Library of functions for 2D graphi
ii  libatk1.0-0            1.22.0-1          The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii  libbonobo2-0           2.22.0-1          Bonobo CORBA interfaces library
ii  libbonoboui2-0         2.22.0-1          The Bonobo UI library
ii  libc6                  2.7-15            GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcairo2              1.6.4-6.1         The Cairo 2D vector graphics libra
ii  libdbus-1-3            1.2.1-4           simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2       0.76-1            simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libfontconfig1         2.6.0-1           generic font configuration library
ii  libfreetype6           2.3.7-2           FreeType 2 font engine, shared lib
ii  libgconf2-4            2.22.0-1          GNOME configuration database syste
ii  libglade2-0            1:2.6.2-1         library to load .glade files at ru
ii  libglib2.0-0           2.16.6-1          The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgnome-keyring0      2.22.3-2          GNOME keyring services library
ii  libgnome2-0            2.20.1.1-1        The GNOME 2 library - runtime file
ii  libgnomecanvas2-0      2.20.1.1-1        A powerful object-oriented display
ii  libgnomeui-0           2.20.1.1-2        The GNOME 2 libraries (User Interf
ii  libgnomevfs2-0         1:2.22.0-5        GNOME Virtual File System (runtime
ii  libgstreamer0.10-0     0.10.19-3         Core GStreamer libraries and eleme
ii  libgtk2.0-0            2.12.11-4         The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  libhal1                0.5.11-6          Hardware Abstraction Layer - share
ii  libice6                2:1.0.4-1         X11 Inter-Client Exchange library
ii  libnotify1 [libnotify1 0.4.4-3           sends desktop notifications to a n
ii  liborbit2              1:2.14.13-0.1     libraries for ORBit2 - a CORBA ORB
ii  libpanel-applet2-0     2.20.3-5          library for GNOME Panel applets
ii  libpango1.0-0          1.20.5-3          Layout and rendering of internatio
ii  libpixman-1-0          0.10.0-2          pixel-manipulation library for X a
ii  libpng12-0             1.2.27-2          PNG library - runtime
ii  libpopt0               1.14-4            lib for parsing cmdline parameters
ii  libsm6                 2:1.0.3-2         X11 Session Management library
ii  libwnck22              2.22.3-1          Window Navigator Construction Kit 
ii  libx11-6               2:1.1.5-2         X11 client-side library
ii  libxcb-render-util0    0.2.1+git1-1      utility libraries for X C Binding 
ii  libxcb-render0         1.1-1.1           X C Binding, render extension
ii  libxcb1                1.1-1.1           X C Binding
ii  libxcursor1            1:1.1.9-1         X cursor management library
ii  libxext6               2:1.0.4-1         X11 miscellaneous extension librar
ii  libxfixes3             1:4.0.3-2         X11 miscellaneous 'fixes' extensio
ii  libxi6                 2:1.1.3-1         X11 Input extension library
ii  libxinerama1           2:1.0.3-2         X11 Xinerama extension library
ii  libxml2                2.6.32.dfsg-4     GNOME XML library
ii  libxrandr2             2:1.2.3-1         X11 RandR extension library
ii  libxrender1            1:0.9.4-2         X Rendering Extension client libra
ii  notification-daemon    0.3.7-1+b1        a daemon that displays passive pop
ii  zlib1g                 1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-12 compression library - runtime

gnome-power-manager recommends no packages.

gnome-power-manager suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information





More information about the pkg-gnome-maintainers mailing list