Lenovo specific question: Battery adittional options? [Stop charging after 60%]

[timonoj]

Hi guys,

I bought recently a Lenovo Ideapad Y510, which is a monster of a laptop, with 16GB of RAM, 1TB HDD + 24GB SSD cache (unused in Kubuntu ATM), and a SLI of Nvidia 750M.
So far, the installation went great, with no effort on my side even on the tricky things such as UEFI and protected boot. Ah well it wanted to install by default on the SSD, but after correcting the installation path that was all.
I just have this question: Is there a way to enable additional battery options such as the ones supported in Windows? This laptop can stop charging the battery once it reaches a certain threshold, which in Windows is 60%. Since most of the time the laptop is plugged, this is a great option to make your battery life much longer. Do you guys know if there's a similar option on Ubuntu to be enabled? I saw there was in the past the tp_smapi_kernel kdms module you could install on your kernel, but apparently it is said not to work on newer CPUs.

Any ideas, insight knowledge?
Thanks a lot!

[SteveRiley]

I bought that same laptop for my daughter...it's a beast! Great gaming machine. But it's running Windows, since the kids play games and don't do much else.

I have often wondered whether those settings are just window dressing. It's absolutely possible to engineer both the battery and the laptop to trickle charge after a certain threshold on their own without the aid of an exposed control setting. The battery in my ThinkPad T520, which is over two years old now, shows no signs of deterioration, and the laptop spends the majority of its time plugged in. When I do use the battery, I get about 2.5 hours usable time now, which is exactly what I got when the machine was new. This makes me think the hardware is caring for itself without any fancy Lenovo power management software bloat.

You might ask your question on the Lenovo forums. A few Linux-savvy folks hang out there.

[timonoj]

I bought that same laptop for my daughter...it's a beast! Great gaming machine. But it's running Windows, since the kids play games and don't do much else.

I have often wondered whether those settings are just window dressing. It's absolutely possible to engineer both the battery and the laptop to trickle charge after a certain threshold on their own without the aid of an exposed control setting. The battery in my ThinkPad T520, which is over two years old now, shows no signs of deterioration, and the laptop spends the majority of its time plugged in. When I do use the battery, I get about 2.5 hours usable time now, which is exactly what I got when the machine was new. This makes me think the hardware is caring for itself without any fancy Lenovo power management software bloat.

You might ask your question on the Lenovo forums. A few Linux-savvy folks hang out there.

Thanks for your reply! Actually yesterday I tested a bit and I think it might be controlled by the BIOS (although it has no option). Whatever is set in WIndows, remains for Linux. As in, if I enable the option to stay at 60% from Lenovo settings in Windows 8, Kubuntu won't try to charge further than 60%. It stays there. It has no interface in Kubuntu, but it still obeys the setting. Not any nearer to a solution...but interesting.

[SteveRiley]

Thanks for your reply! Actually yesterday I tested a bit and I think it might be controlled by the BIOS (although it has no option). Whatever is set in WIndows, remains for Linux. As in, if I enable the option to stay at 60% from Lenovo settings in Windows 8, Kubuntu won't try to charge further than 60%. It stays there. It has no interface in Kubuntu, but it still obeys the setting. Not any nearer to a solution...but interesting.

Interesting. Perhaps you should boot Windows and change the setting to 100% then, so that you can at least enjoy a full battery.

Oh, and technically, you don't have a BIOS on that machine. The firmware is UEFI.

[dave2001]

I just have this question: Is there a way to enable additional battery options such as the ones supported in Windows? This laptop can stop charging the battery once it reaches a certain threshold, which in Windows is 60%. Since most of the time the laptop is plugged, this is a great option to make your battery life much longer. Do you guys know if there's a similar option on Ubuntu to be enabled? I saw there was in the past the tp_smapi_kernel kdms module you could install on your kernel.
Thanks a lot!

Hi there Timon, I am a fan of lenovo, my first laptop was a Thinkpad , and I've had some type or another since. There is a great power management tool (which is still current right up to 13.10) called TLP, which is made specifically for lenovo laptops (here's a link on how to install the ppa and TLP
http://www.webupd8.org/2013/04/impro...y-life-in.html.
In conjunction with the the tp-smapi-dkms module, TLP will do exactly what you want with the battery, as well as controlling all kinds of power features for laptops. It is completely customizable, so you can use it control only the PM functions you want, and have other utilities for other issues if you so choose.

Oh... Disregard above! I'm sorry. I just looked up tp-smapi on Thinkwiki to make sure I wasn't steering you in the wrong direction. According to that site the "IIdeaPad series have firmware that is completely different from other ThinkPad models. Neither tp_smapi nor thinkpad-acpi support these models." If I remember correctly, there are several power management functions of both TLP and Laptop-mode-tools which depend on thinkpad-acpi. You may just have to deal with a slightly less than optimal battery life, both short term (single discharge), and long term (ability to hold charge). TLP or Laptop-mode-tools will probably sill give you some useful power-management features (do note: only have one of the packages installed, TLP and Laptop-mode-tools do not work together).

So I suppose I've made a completely useless post.. ah well, at least you have confirmation that tp-smapi isn't your solution. You can at least make sure that your graphics hardware is managed in the best possible way, discrete gpu's can be real battery hogs in linux if you don't get them configured right. If you're ideapad has the optimus deal, where it also has "swtichable" onboard intel graphics chip in addition to the discrete nvidia cards, you might want to look into Bumblebee http://bumblebee-project.org/

I'm not sure what your level of Ubuntu knowledge you have, so this site might or might not also be useful to you: http://www.linwik.com/ubuntu_kubuntu_xubuntu_guides

Best of luck, sorry I couldn't be of more help.