2

On a brand new Laptop, Ubuntu fails to start when on half charged battery. It otherwise works perfectly.

The symptoms are:

  1. "bios" startup screen
  2. grub menu shows for a few seconds
  3. ubuntu logo shows briefly (2 sec)
  4. laptop powers off abruptly

When restarting with plug on the wall, I see battery level is 47%. Unplugging the laptop works fine, and it will happely work on battery for a few hours...

I tried to journalctl -b-1, but I don't see any obvious problem, and I don't really know how to troubleshoot this...

Boot process goes to the point where:

[...]
mars 19 07:46:29 tibook systemd[1]: Condition check resulted in Dispatch Password Requests to Console Directory Watch being skipped.
mars 19 07:46:29 tibook systemd[1]: Started Forward Password Requests to Plymouth Directory Watch.
mars 19 07:46:29 tibook systemd[1]: Reached target Local Encrypted Volumes.
mars 19 07:46:29 tibook systemd[1]: Mounted /var/log.
mars 19 07:46:29 tibook systemd[1]: Starting Flush Journal to Persistent Storage...
mars 19 07:46:29 tibook systemd-journald[1380]: Time spent on flushing to /var/log/journal/13ef6951f0b3451c86ad31ff8146b19a is 7.516ms for 1007 entries.

I will of course give any useful information, but I don't know what to look for... (maybe ACPI ??)

Any pointer would be appreciated.

EDIT1: this does not happen everytime. I just did just boot while the battery was at 32%.

Thanks

alci
  • 5,839
  • 1
    Before anything else what you should be looking for is an uEFI update. – ChanganAuto Mar 19 '22 at 09:42
  • If it’s a hard shutdown before a boot sequence is even done, this sounds like a bad battery. If it cannot provide a base amount of power to the system, then the hardware will shut itself off rather than run with less voltage/amperage … – matigo Mar 19 '22 at 10:11
  • @matigo in fact the boot sequence starts, and I get a journalctl log, so I hope it's not a faulty battery. Moreover, the battery works fine otherwise, except for this problem that does not happen everytime... – alci Mar 19 '22 at 11:22
  • @ChanganAuto the laptop is new, I already have the latest BIOS/UEFI installed... – alci Mar 19 '22 at 11:24
  • 1
    Do you use your notebook in cold places? Batteries tend to dislike temperatures below a certain threshold. This could explain the inconsistent failure rate. If it’s something in the OS, then you’ll see something written to /var/log/syslog a few microseconds before the failure (unless you’re getting “read-only file system” errors) – matigo Mar 19 '22 at 11:37
  • 1
    Try resetting the Power Manager... shut down laptop, hold down the POWER button for 30 seconds, retest for power off problem. Report back. – heynnema Mar 19 '22 at 15:08
  • @heynnema that worked !! Thanks a lot. – alci Mar 25 '22 at 19:38
  • 1
    @alci Status please... – heynnema Mar 30 '22 at 19:02

1 Answers1

1

Try and reset the Power management (a feature that turns off the power or switches the system's components to a low-power state when inactive) this way:

Shutdown computer, hold down the Power button for ~30 seconds and reboot. Then retest for power off problem.

heynnema
  • 70,711