Battery status icon doesn't work properly

Roxxor

I am using Gnome Desktop on my Laptop. I want to have the battery status icon at the top on the menu. When I add it I get the message

simon_irl · Guru Joined: 07 Oct 2004 Posts: 403 Location: New Zealand

i'm not sure what's happening there (i don't use gnome) but i'd check the services you have running when you're logged in as root against what you have running when you're a user: it sounds like there might be some kind of gnome acpi service running for root that you need to activate for the other login.

since it works for root, if it's not something different in the gnome setup, then i suppose it could be a permissions problem...although i can't think why the permissions would be wrong on your system. still, on my system, /var/run/acpid.socket has rw permissions for everyone (not just root). does yours? if not maybe changing it (chmod 666 /var/run/acpid.socket) will help. if that's not the problem, maybe take a look at what's going on with the acpi stuff in /proc. on my laptop i can view the battery info directly under /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1...again the relevant files (info and state) ought to be world-readable.

Roxxor · Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2006 11:47 am Post subject:

I simply solved it by downloading acpid.

simon_irl · Guru Joined: 07 Oct 2004 Posts: 403 Location: New Zealand

cool. i wonder how it worked for root if the necessary software wasn't installed?

Roxxor · Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 8:14 am Post subject:

tbart · Apprentice Joined: 31 Oct 2004 Posts: 151

acpid is not responsible for anything battery-related. it just catches acpi events you can then use to trigger functions (shutdown, suspend, whatever)...

guess this has to be considered a bug, because it may need acpid for making buttons be able to do the described things, but battery status must work anyway.

(i have no acpid and it works.. with kde or xfce.. you can read your battery status in /proc/acpi/battery/*/, no need for a userspace deamon for this)