old battery?

[Mario Vukelic]

On Sat, 2007-01-20 at 15:49 -0500, Paul Kaplan wrote:
> On Saturday 20 January 2007 3:30 pm, Mario Vukelic wrote:
> > On Sat, 2007-01-20 at 15:04 -0500, Paul Kaplan wrote:
> > > How can I tell how much charge my laptop battery has when full?
> >
> > On Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper) and 6.10 (Edgy) you should be able to unplug and
> > then see a battery icon in the notification area (I can't remember how
> > it was in earlier versions). Hover the mouse cursor over it and it
> > should show you the remaining time. If you don't see the battery icon
> > then go to menu System/Preferences/Power Management and configure when
> > the icon is shown.
> I was looking for something more technical.  I'm trying to figure out whether 
> the battery is loosing it's ability to hold a charge or whether it's just 
> discharging very rapidly.

I see :) Poke around in /proc/acpi/battery/*, using cat on the cmd line.
I don't know what exactly to do with the info there, but it might give
you hints.  E.g., on my laptop:

cat /proc/acpi/battery/C1B1/info 
present:                 yes
design capacity:         4659 mAh
last full capacity:      4659 mAh
battery technology:      rechargeable
design voltage:          10800 mV
design capacity warning: 233 mAh
design capacity low:     47 mAh
capacity granularity 1:  100 mAh
capacity granularity 2:  100 mAh
model number:            Primary
serial number:           00719 2006/09/04
battery type:            LIon
OEM info:                Hewlett-Packard

cat /proc/acpi/battery/C1B1/state
present:                 yes
capacity state:          ok
charging state:          charged
present rate:            0 mA
remaining capacity:      4496 mAh
present voltage:         12257 mV