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My new and recent setup of Ubuntu 14.04 on a Dell Inspiron 7437 (laptop) shows some peculiar behavior in terms of the battery indicator:

If the laptop is connected to its power supply, the indicator works fine and shows the progress of charging and also discharging after I disconnect the power supply. However, if I then restart the laptop on battery, there is no battery indicator anymore (which is really annoying on a laptop...). It will return though once I connect it again to the power supply...

I have already reinstalled the service and tried several other fixes (seems to be a common problem...) from the web but so far nothing has really worked yet.

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  • All Settings -> Power: what is the setting for "Show battery status in the menu bar"?
    – Jakke
    Jun 24, 2014 at 0:54

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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Here is a step by step process based on previous entries that helped me. Open a terminal session and use the following command;

gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub

in gedit change the following entry from

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_osi=Linux"

Then save and close your gedit session. Next in your terminal session run

sudo update-grub

This will rebuild your grub menu. Reboot and look for your battery icon!

For me this didn't work until I updated my bios from version A05 to A13. If you also need to update your bios you can use unetbootin and freedos to load your .exe in dos!

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Add acpi_osi=Linux to grub boot options

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upower/+bug/1088146/comments/13

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  • This answer is incomplete. Please add more info and provide the link for reference.
    – Parto
    Sep 7, 2014 at 15:43
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I've tried about everything but have given up hope. The only workaround I have is to have 2 versions of /etc/default/grub , one, for battery status, with 

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_osi=Linux"

and the other for touchpad with 

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi=off"

They appear mutually exclusive - i.e. either I have battery status with no touchpad, or vice versa.

By the way - I'm using Ubuntu 16.04

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  • So do you edit the file and sudo update-grub and reboot each time you want to switch? Do you have the same device? You could clarify somewhat.
    – Zanna ♦
    May 14, 2017 at 11:13
  • Yes indeed I do that Sudo and reboot each time. It is the same ACER Aspire-ES1-512 I had before but updated from 15.0 to 16.04 L TS, 64 bit. Intel® Pentium(R) CPU N3540 @ 2.16GHz .
    – Hugh
    May 14, 2017 at 14:58
  • so your device is not the same as the one mentioned by OP - so there is no way of knowing whether this might work for them
    – Zanna ♦
    May 14, 2017 at 15:04
  • I changed to 16.04 at your suggestion. You implied that if I did you would be able to help. So far I've no evidence of that. And by the way I didn't know how to 'ping' you.
    – Hugh
    May 14, 2017 at 15:55
  • you ping someone like this @Zanna... you must be talking about a question you asked? Or did you not intend to post an answer to this question?
    – Zanna ♦
    May 14, 2017 at 16:01

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