Battery problems

[Robert Moskowitz]

On 03/12/2012 09:46 AM, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
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>> On 03/10/2012 04:31 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
>>> On 03/10/2012 08:41 PM, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
>>>> It sounds like a bad battery. At least I have had the same thing
>>>> happen in both Linux and Windows when a battery was going bad. Also,
>>>> if you do not cycle the battery, the chip that monitors battery life
>>>> in the battery does not get updated to the current battery life, so
>>>> it ends up reporting the battery state incorrectly. (The chip is in
>>>> the battery, not the computer.)
>>> How do I get the battery to cycle? It HAS been a long time since a
> REAL poweroff (number of reboots). Also I have not run the battery
> down for a long time. Really not since I got the system back in
> Jan... I bet I am past my 90 day warranty...
>>>
> Sorry for the late response. This is normally covered in the user's
> manual. What you do is first fully charge the battery. Then you
> unplug the power and let the system run down until it does an
> automatic shutdown. Then you charge it up again. Some systems come
> with a utility that runs the battery down, so you do not have to
> worry about your OS shutting the system down too soon.

I did this when I first got the unit.  And it SEEMed to run fine for 2 
months with few power offs.

And it was working just fine a couple weeks ago.  My practice is friday 
afternoon to suspend then shut off on the powerstrip (turning the KVM, 
switch, AP and other sundries off).  Saturday night I would power up and 
have 80% power left.  It seems that two weekends ago, it when blewy, as 
it cold booted that saturday night.  I fought with it all week and then 
on friday realized I had a battery problem.

Now with the new battery, how with Fedora, am I going to run down the 
battery?  I don't see that IBM has a Linux utility for this, oddly enough...