Xubuntu, no battery detected

Question

Recently I installed Xubuntu on my old Latitude D620. I'm having a problem where there's no battery indicator in the taskbar and there's no option to turn it on. Heck, xubuntu can't even find the battery. There's no battery section when I go to /proc/acpi/. When I run acpi -V it outputs

tyler@tyler-D620:~$ acpi -V
Adapter 0: on-line
Thermal 0: ok, 54.5 degrees C
Thermal 0: trip point 0 switches to mode critical at temperature 126.0 degrees C
Cooling 0: Processor 0 of 10
Cooling 1: Processor 0 of 10

by the way, should I be worried about that 126 degC thing?

Anways when I run upower -d it outputs:

tyler@tyler-D620:~$ upower -d
Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/line_power_AC
  native-path: /sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/ACPI0003:00/power_supply/AC
power supply:         yes
updated:              Wed Jul 24 15:47:27 2013 (1071 seconds ago)
has history:          no
has statistics:       no
line-power
 online:             yes

Daemon:
daemon-version:  0.9.20
can-suspend:     yes
can-hibernate:   no
on-battery:      no
on-low-battery:  no
lid-is-closed:   no
lid-is-present:  yes
is-docked:       no

As a final note I would like to note that this is my first time using xubuntu/linux in general...so please go easy on me :p

Thank you the help!

edit: I suppose I should add that the laptop can run without the adapter plugged in, but only for about 20 minutes.

Answer 1

I had this problem too. To solve it I powered off the machine and removed the battery, then turned the laptop back on using the AC supply.

After it had loaded and I had checked that upower was reporting no battery, I powered off again, plugged the battery back in and powered up once more.

This time when I ran upower -d it showed that my battery was back, and charging.

I think the issue is one of the modules that loads the battery information and AC charging not loading correctly. Powering it up without the battery in stops the module from trying to load as it can't detect a battery in it.

When you load it back up, the modules try again and - for me at least - loaded correctly to allow charging again.

Let me know how you get on.