[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#510170: hal: does not identify ac-adapter correctly and shows wrong battery status

[Philipp Wessels]

Package: hal
Version: 0.5.11-6
Severity: important

Hello,

I have a problem with hal on a fresh debian testing (lenny) installation on an Acer Aspire 2012WLCi (Aspire 2010 series) notebook, because the 
daemon does not notice whether an ac-adapter is plugged in or not and it always assumes that no ac-adapter is connected. This has some bad effects 
to several other packages: kpowersave shows wrong status information; hard-drive file check is always skipped during boot-up, because the system 
thinks it is on battery power; anacron daemon does not execute schedules for the same reason...
Furthermore hal thinks that the battery charge can not exceed 70% (ACPI thinks the same, but it adds that the battery is full after 70%)

I found out that the ACPI system correctly detects the ac-adapter and so I will attach the output of 'acpi -V', 'lshal | grep adapter' 
and 'lshal | grep battery' (the notebook-battery was fully charged according to status LED and the notebook was connected to the ac-adapter during 
the output):

pwessels at flipp:~$ acpi -V
     Battery 0: Full, 70%, design capacity 4300 mAh
  AC Adapter 0: on-line
     Cooling 0: Processor 0 of 10

pwessels at flipp:~$ lshal | grep adapter
udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer_power_supply_ac_adapter_ACAD'
  ac_adapter.present = false  (bool)
  info.capabilities = {'ac_adapter'} (string list)
  info.category = 'ac_adapter'  (string)
  info.udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer_power_supply_ac_adapter_ACAD'  (string)

pwessels at flipp:~$ lshal | grep battery
udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer_power_supply_battery_BAT1'
  battery.charge_level.current = 44548  (0xae04)  (int)
  battery.charge_level.design = 63640  (0xf898)  (int)
  battery.charge_level.last_full = 63640  (0xf898)  (int)
  battery.charge_level.percentage = 70  (0x46)  (int)
  battery.charge_level.rate = 0  (0x0)  (int)
  battery.is_rechargeable = true  (bool)
  battery.model = 'Li_Ion 4300mA'  (string)
  battery.present = true  (bool)
  battery.rechargeable.is_charging = false  (bool)
  battery.rechargeable.is_discharging = false  (bool)
  battery.reporting.current = 3010  (0xbc2)  (int)
  battery.reporting.design = 4300  (0x10cc)  (int)
  battery.reporting.last_full = 4300  (0x10cc)  (int)
  battery.reporting.rate = 0  (0x0)  (int)
  battery.reporting.technology = 'Li-ion'  (string)
  battery.reporting.unit = 'mAh'  (string)
  battery.serial = ''  (string)
  battery.technology = 'lithium-ion'  (string)
  battery.type = 'primary'  (string)
  battery.vendor = 'COMPAL'  (string)
  battery.voltage.current = 16585  (0x40c9)  (int)
  battery.voltage.design = 14800  (0x39d0)  (int)
  battery.voltage.unit = 'mV'  (string)
  info.capabilities = {'battery'} (string list)
  info.category = 'battery'  (string)
  info.udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer_power_supply_battery_BAT1'  (string)

I hope you can help me with this misbehavior and you have a clue for this discrepancy between ACPIs AC Adapter status and hals ac_adapter.present 
variable, because it would be great to fix this problem due to the effects to other programs (see above). I will be pleased to provide any  
information you need for fixing the problem and I already want to say thanks for helping me at this time and many thanks for the great software the 
Debian community always provides!

Have a good year 2009 and many greetings from Germany,
Philipp Wessels

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

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

Versions of packages hal depends on:
ii  adduser           3.110                  add and remove users and groups
ii  dbus              1.2.1-4                simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  hal-info          20080508+git20080601-1 Hardware Abstraction Layer - fdi f
ii  libc6             2.7-16                 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
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  libexpat1         2.0.1-4                XML parsing C library - runtime li
ii  libgcc1           1:4.3.2-1              GCC support library
ii  libglib2.0-0      2.16.6-1               The GLib library of C routines
ii  libhal-storage1   0.5.11-6               Hardware Abstraction Layer - share
ii  libhal1           0.5.11-6               Hardware Abstraction Layer - share
ii  libsmbios2        2.0.3.dfsg-1           Provide access to (SM)BIOS informa
ii  libstdc++6        4.3.2-1                The GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii  libusb-0.1-4      2:0.1.12-13            userspace USB programming library
ii  libvolume-id0     0.125-7                libvolume_id shared library
ii  lsb-base          3.2-20                 Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  mount             2.13.1.1-1             Tools for mounting and manipulatin
ii  pciutils          1:3.0.0-6              Linux PCI Utilities
ii  pm-utils          1.1.2.4-1              utilities and scripts for power ma
ii  udev              0.125-7                /dev/ and hotplug management daemo
ii  usbutils          0.73-10                Linux USB utilities

Versions of packages hal recommends:
ii  eject                       2.1.5+deb1-4 ejects CDs and operates CD-Changer
ii  libsmbios-bin               2.0.3.dfsg-1 Provide access to (SM)BIOS informa

Versions of packages hal suggests:
pn  gnome-device-manager          <none>     (no description available)

-- no debconf information