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Post by pharrisire on Nov 25, 2010 9:35:48 GMT -5
Got this on boot:
"Battery initialization failed - giving up"
I know the battery doesn't last long (I keep it on ac),
but it does still work.
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Post by Kevin McAleavey on Nov 27, 2010 1:28:29 GMT -5
Got this on boot: "Battery initialization failed - giving up" I know the battery doesn't last long (I keep it on ac), but it does still work. Yep ... that too is normal, and part of boot. What it means is that the kernel tried to talk to the ACPI interface which handles battery percentage available as well as charge/discharge information, but at the time, the kernel probes for the information, the motherboard wasn't ready to talk to the kernel about it just yet. Look at the top of your screen next to the clock, and if there's a battery icon up there (laptops only in case someone else is reading this) then it eventually DID get information from the machine or that icon will appear with a big red X on it indicating that the battery information isn't there at all. On non-laptops, no battery indictation at all is normal. But like I've said in other messages, the level of detail in the boot diagnostics is annoying and irrelevant UNLESS your machine doesn't boot in which case we're asking folks to send us an image from a digital camera or describe the last thing they saw on screen before it wedges. If it boots, you're merely seeing the "thought processes" of the kernel as it tries to figure out what it's running on, what it expects to see and what it doesn't see when it expects it. KNOS' BSD kernel is plenty smart though - a failure at a certain point doesn't mean that the information doesn't show up later and the boot continues merrily along.  |
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Post by pharrisire on Nov 27, 2010 10:46:57 GMT -5
Battery icon wasn't showing at first, so I added it by
the "add to panel" right click - and it now shows green
with 49 minutes left at first, and went up to 2hr 30min
shortly thereafter - so all is well on the battery front.
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Post by Kevin McAleavey on Nov 27, 2010 16:25:37 GMT -5
Battery icon wasn't showing at first, so I added it by the "add to panel" right click - and it now shows green with 49 minutes left at first, and went up to 2hr 30min shortly thereafter - so all is well on the battery front. Strange one indeed. I've been back and forth with the BSD ACPI guys over this, and from what I've gathered, this one might be impossible to fix as it's apparently caused by the way Lenovo designed their battery charge system. If I'm right, try booting up on battery only with the AC unplugged ... you can power it up once you get to the desktop of course. What you should see is no error on boot and the battery icon will be there on the desktop once it comes up. If so, then my theory is correct and the problem is that the battery data only appears when it's running on battery and no data is forthcoming when it's on AC. Among the myriad suggestions I was offered was to check with Lenovo's site and see if you need their "BIOS/ACPI" update. Others have applied it and one or two said that it fixed it on their model, but for most it didn't do diddly as it's likely a hardwired problem on their motherboard. If you google "freebsd acpi battery lenovo" you can see other gnashings of teeth over this same problem you saw. FWIW, I've added a "me too" to the trouble ticket at BSD on this one. |
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Post by pharrisire on Nov 30, 2010 14:12:03 GMT -5
Your theory was correct as far as the icon goes.
After booting up on battery power, the icon does indeed appear.
Looking in the "Power Management Preferences", the default is
set to "Only display an icon when a battery is present" -
which in reality means "Only when booted up on battery" because
the battery is present at all times.
I wasn't in position in time to check the other part of your idea -
whether of not the boot error disappeared.
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Post by Kevin McAleavey on Dec 3, 2010 23:39:28 GMT -5
Your theory was correct as far as the icon goes. After booting up on battery power, the icon does indeed appear. Looking in the "Power Management Preferences", the default is set to "Only display an icon when a battery is present" - which in reality means "Only when booted up on battery" because the battery is present at all times. I wasn't in position in time to check the other part of your idea - whether of not the boot error disappeared. Already got the answer from another person with similar ... the problem IS how the circuitry is wired in the machine itself and no way to work around it. When on AC power, the battery IS out of the circuit entirely and therefore nothing to monitor other than the AC power supply. In our KNOS desktop, that icon is designed to appear only when ACPI says there's a battery and in that machine of yours, it really isn't there. That's why it all worked out the way it did. So far, we've spotted a few new bugs in BSD's stuff which will be fixed in our next build, but that's not one of them. |
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