Thanks for all the help. Puppy won't run with battery power

Booting, installing, newbie
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greengeek
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#21 Post by greengeek »

1) I would suggest contacting forum member sindi via PM - I recall they have mentioned a number of times that they have a Dell laptop with power problems which are caused by the fact that the Dell power supply has an extra pin which tells the CPU when to go into frequency shutdown or something.

In sindi's case Puppy did not correctly handle the signal from that pin. Most likely different to your problem but maybe worth a conversation.

2) When I re-read the thread so far I am not convinced that you have booted with pfix=ram to ensure your savefiles are ignored. (It looked like you had it as a kernel option in the install). Any chance of removing the hard drive and booting from CD to ensure your savefiles are being completely ignored?

3) If puppy 4.3.1 shows the same fault as the newer puppies then I am not hopeful of a solution being found, but if you want to get desperate and try some non-standard puppies, maybe burn this experimental puppy iso to CD and see if it boots on battery. I successfully used it to troubleshoot some video problems on Toshibas but who knows if it is even compatible with Dell. Worth a try if all else fails.

number77
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#22 Post by number77 »

bigpup wrote:Never did answer any of this.
Remove the "pfix=ram". That tells Puppy to boot and not use the save.

In Tahrpup 6.0.5
menu->System->Puppy Event Manager->Power
Have this set to "0"

Maybe some kind of bios setting in the computer is causing this.
Something to do with acpi=off :idea:

ide=nodma,acpi=off
Tried to boot with not having this in the boot process?
I had formatted sda2 and deleted all mentions of menu.1st on sda1 so there were no save files.
In tahr 605 puppy event manager power was already by default set at 0.
acpi=off was because I had problems with booting my vostro so used it.
If I removed all of these there was no difference. It hung.

jd7654
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#23 Post by jd7654 »

Back to the specifics of the hang:

You described the hang as occurring somewhere between immediately and 30 seconds after power is pulled. Is it random, or closer to 30 seconds?

As soon as the screen goes blank, is all activity, hard drive, leds, etc, immediately stopped? Fan is on or off?

Is it really hung or just screen is blank? No response to:
CTRL-ALT-F1 or CTRL-ALT-F4 to switch between console and XWIN.

Will it soft shutdown with:
CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE
CTRL-ALT-DELETE

number77
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#24 Post by number77 »

jd7654 wrote:Back to the specifics of the hang:

You described the hang as occurring somewhere between immediately and 30 seconds after power is pulled. Is it random, or closer to 30 seconds?

As soon as the screen goes blank, is all activity, hard drive, leds, etc, immediately stopped? Fan is on or off?

Is it really hung or just screen is blank? No response to:
CTRL-ALT-F1 or CTRL-ALT-F4 to switch between console and XWIN.

Will it soft shutdown with:
CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE
CTRL-ALT-DELETE
The screen goes blank, hard drive is spinning led for power is on, blue led for bluetooth, I think, is on.
CTRL-ALT-F1 or CTRL-ALT-F4 to switch between console and XWIN. has no effect, soft shutdown does nothing.
If I boot 431 on battery it starts but as soon as I do anything from desktop like go to menu it hangs or does something.

jd7654
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#25 Post by jd7654 »

So WITHOUT the acpi=off option, which is for troubleshooting ACPI, and would disable the following tests:

Are you able to suspend and resume without hanging while on mains? Sometimes can hang on resume.

Open a console window and enter:

Code: Select all

udevadm monitor
Pull power.
Can you see event messages of AC power loss thrown up to system?
How soon after pulling mains is the hang? Does it look like the Suspend? (activity, leds, blinking, etc.)

I have seen issues with newer pups with some power management issues. Also old pups. The slightly older Slacko 5.7.0 has been the most consistent and reliable.(in my experience)

Also: do you know if ANY Linux works on battery (iike Win XP does) on your laptop? Maybe try something small like Lubuntu live CD,

number77
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#26 Post by number77 »

The installed tahr 605 will go into suspend and regain to normal.
udevadm monitor does not monitor mains removal.

jd7654
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#27 Post by jd7654 »

number77 wrote:The installed tahr 605 will go into suspend and regain to normal.
udevadm monitor does not monitor mains removal.
Not good. That's all I got.

number77
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#28 Post by number77 »

Thanks for the help jd. Next step is pull it apart and check and clean.

number77
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#29 Post by number77 »

What does CTRL-ALT-F1 or CTRL-ALT-F4 do. On my working laptop running tahr605 if I press CTRL-ALT-F1 it doesnt quite go into terminal, there is no # but I can type, say xwin but it does nothing. CTRL-ALT-F4 restores xwin.
Question realy is how do I get into terminal on my latitude d620 that has lost its screen so I can try xorgwizard.

jd7654
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#30 Post by jd7654 »

Those are just your virtual consolel, ctrl-alt-f1,f2,f3,etc. You can login on vt 2, puppy has Xwin on vt 4, other linux may have X on 7 or 8.

Was just checking if you're really hung, which appears it is, so you'll have no response to ctrl-alt-*** or any messages.

Did you every try any other Puppy or Linux? Seems you have a mainstream laptop that should work with Linux, so if it doesn't work with other, may be some strange hardware problem. Old computers can develop strange issues of aging electronics.

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rockedge
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#31 Post by rockedge »

odd thing....following your thread here....I have a desktop that does exactly the same behavior. At random times I will return to the machine after a period of time and it will not come "alive". eventually only hard reset through holding the power button....but the machine will bark....

peterw
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Battery Life

#32 Post by peterw »

Hi
From the symptoms, I strongly suspect that you have a hardware issue. The laptop and its batteries are about 10 years old now. I have a laptop with the same processors (not a Dell) and I had to buy a replacement battery to make it useful, although on mains power it was fine. Dells of this vintage had a circuit in the power supply that communicated with the motherboard to make sure you were using a Dell Power Supply. If you did not use Dell or a Power Supply with the right part it would play up. The Bios info gave you details.
Also, print out what /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0 says about your battery. It may give some clues.

number77
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Re: Battery Life

#33 Post by number77 »

peterw wrote:Hi
From the symptoms, I strongly suspect that you have a hardware issue. The laptop and its batteries are about 10 years old now. I have a laptop with the same processors (not a Dell) and I had to buy a replacement battery to make it useful, although on mains power it was fine. Dells of this vintage had a circuit in the power supply that communicated with the motherboard to make sure you were using a Dell Power Supply. If you did not use Dell or a Power Supply with the right part it would play up. The Bios info gave you details.
Also, print out what /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0 says about your battery. It may give some clues.
The power supply is genuine dell, the battery is new but compatible.
====> NOTEBOOK BATTERY (BAT0) <====

Complete Report:
Name DELL 00
SBDS Manufacture Date 2014-06-14
design capacity 4400 mAh
last full capacity 6600 mAh
design voltage 11100 mV
design capacity warning 440 mAh
design capacity low 133 mAh
capacity granularity 1 44 mAh
capacity granularity 2 44 mAh
capacity state ok
charging state charging
present rate 1575 mA
remaining capacity 5665 mAh
present voltage 12412 mV
AC-state on-line

Capacity Summary:
Remaining capacity: 5665 mAh, 85.8% of last full capacity
Design capacity: 4400 mAh
Last full capacity: 6600 mAh, 150.0% of design capacity
Capacity loss: -50.0%
Any ideas.

peterw
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Puzzling

#34 Post by peterw »

Hi

Battery looks good.

Just looked at an old Dell Latitude 100L that I have and looked at the Bios Settings. On page 5, I have a Bios setting that allows me to control screen brightness for both Battery only and Power Supply On. If you have the same feature could you check it. On mine I have set it to full brightness, both on battery only and with power.

Gordie
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#35 Post by Gordie »

Had an HP DV6 laptop with much the same problem. Intermittent dead battery. Was running Slackware64 14.2 at the time. Anyway, my son took over ownership of the computer and wiped the drive and installed Windows 7.
Like magic the battery is now free of problems. All symptoms went away.
Weird

number77
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Re: Puzzling

#36 Post by number77 »

peterw wrote:Hi

Battery looks good.

Just looked at an old Dell Latitude 100L that I have and looked at the Bios Settings. On page 5, I have a Bios setting that allows me to control screen brightness for both Battery only and Power Supply On. If you have the same feature could you check it. On mine I have set it to full brightness, both on battery only and with power.
Hi
Set them both to max brightness but switched the psu off and a few seconds later it hung.

peterw
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Location: UK

More thoughts

#37 Post by peterw »

Hi
OK, so it's not the Bios settings. We need to explore a bit further.
1. If the Dell is powered up into the Bios and the Power Supply disconnected, will it switch off or will it keep going?
2. If you have the old battery (hoping it can hold some charge) could you fit it and then run Puppy to see if it can remain on for a while without the Power lead.
3. If you run another distro like Mint does the lack of a a connected Power Supply still cause a shutdown?
4. When you clean up the fan, etc, carefully inspect the components around the power supply socket and the battery connectors. I have had dry joints in these parts which has caused failures.
It is a process of eliminating potential causes of the problem.

number77
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#38 Post by number77 »

Hi
It will stay in the bios on battery half an hour at least, no hang.
The old battery had the same problem.
I did install lubuntu and daphile, same problem.
Probably nothing for it but to open it and check for dry joints.
Strange thing is xp runs all day on battery.

peterw
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Location: UK

Still puzzled

#39 Post by peterw »

Hi number77

Stripping, cleaning and inspecting is needed. However, I can't, yet, see why Windows XP is fine and Linux gives a hang. Another thought is that a bios update might solve the issue. A10 is the latest June, 2013. Its worth a try if your bios is not that.
http://www.dell.com/support/home/uk/en/ ... Id=R186796

number77
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#40 Post by number77 »

No its not the bios, I already have that on.

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