Critical Battery Level settings on Cinnamon

[zangetsu]

Is there a way to set a different percentage and a different action when the laptop is running on critical battery level? Even for the low battery level because changing the critical setting may influence low level if these two levels are too close

For instance, I'd like to set the critical level to 15%, low to 25% and suspend as critical action.

I saw a bunch of bug reports and posts on the web but none of those is recent or officially recognized

[Pierre]

which Desktop Version of LinuxMint are you using ?
- Cinnamon
- Mate
- Xfce

[zangetsu]

I'm talking about Cinnamon, that's why I posted in this forum section

Edit:
Edited the OP title by adding the DE

[AZgl1800]

I'm talking about Cinnamon, that's why I posted in this forum section

Edit:
Edited the OP title by adding the DE

Regardless of the Forum you are in, it is always good practice to include the contents of inxi -Fzxd

this removes all doubt as to what OS/DE you are using... it makes a difference in how replies are couched for you.

I'm on 18.3 Cinnamon, and sometimes, my laptop will just suddenly for "no apparent reason" just simply "Power off" w/o me asking it to, and the Battery is in the area of 80-100 percent.

Have not found out why it is doing it yet.
Has happened twice while the Lid was Closed,
and twice while I was typing

so far, unsaved document data loss is the only thing I have lost.
makes me edgy, I do AutoSaves at 2 minutes, and manual saves after every change of a text document.

[johnny9308]

I've also noticed an issue while my Linux Mint laptop is on battery. It is a fairly new laptop (Asus Nitro 5) running Linux Mint 18.2 (Sonya) and the Cinnamon desktop. I have no problems at all while plugged in which is the way I use the laptop most of the time. But when I unplug it, it will shut itself down within a minute or two (give or take) even powering off quickly while I'm actively using the laptop.
I tried editing /etc/UPower/UPower.conf to set `UsePercentageForPolicy=false` (was: true) but still have this problem.

All my Cinnamon graphical power management settings for battery are set to do nothing if the power is low or when inactive. The battery shows as fully charged - I don't think this has to do with any battery problems (and the laptop is not even 6 months old).

[carum carvi]

Is there a way to set a different percentage and a different action when the laptop is running on critical battery level?

Yes this is possible with "dconf-editor". This program lets one edit the configuration of different Linux desktops and Cinnamon has got the most options one can tweak. Great stuff.

Go to "Software Mananger"
Type "dconf-editor", beware you dont forget to type the hyphen in the middle, otherwise you could pick the wrong editor.

When installed, select step by step the following path in "dconf-editor":
1 org / 2 cinnamon / 3 settings-daemon / 4 plugins / 5 power ( You can BOOKMARK this specific editor page in the upper right corner, so next time you open conf-editor it will automatically open the page for the powermanagement options and you dont have to plough through 5 steps everytime).

In the "Power" page of conf-editor, you can select your own percentage for suspend when your battery is critical. There are many other power management options available as well. Choose to your liking

Endnote: Be careful though with changing other settings in dconf-editor besides simple powermanagement settings. When one is not knowledgeable, changing some settings in dconf-editor can cause problems.

[AZgl1800]

My ASUS TP500L laptop will run about 5 hours on battery.... then it gives me a warning it is going to shut down.
18.3 Cinnamon

[johnny9308]

Thanks, Carum. The power settings in dconf-editor look essentially the same as what is surfaced via the Cinnamon control panel - in my case I didn't see anything that looked out of place.
Some hilights:

critical-battery-action: nothing
percentage-action: 2
percentage-critical: 3
percentage-low: 10
sleep-inactive-battery-timeout: 0 (never)
sleep-inactive-battery-type: suspend
time-action: 120
time-critical: 300
time-low: 1200
use-time-for-policy: unchecked

[johnny9308]

I tried installing "tlp" (Linux Advanced Power Management) which has been great at enhancing power management on a different laptop, but that didn't help in this case.

On a hunch related to reading another forum post, I tried changing the active graphics card on my system. I had been using the NVidia GeForce 1050ti card, so I switched to the on-board Intel graphics card and rebooted. This time after rebooting, logging in, then disconnecting the power supply, the machine did not turn off. I switched back to the NVidia card and tried the same steps and it _did_ power off. I was able to reproduce this a couple of times in a row with the different graphics card settings.

For anyone reading, the way to switch the active graphics card is by clicking the icon in your tray area (bottom right corner of the screen) with the tool tip "Active graphics card: (either NVidia or Intel)". Choose Intel.
As to why NVidia gives problems when on battery, I have no idea. But was able to type this entire response on battery power so what I did seems to be working.

[johnny9308]

Unfortunately, this still seems random. I tried unplugging again and the laptop turned off about 30 seconds later. Yet I was able to power it back on (still on battery) and type this response. Would appreciate any other suggestions.

[smurphos]

@johnny9308

I suspect your problem is not directly related to the settings but a hardware support / kernel issue as you are using newish hardware with an old Mint release.

I'd suggest starting a new thread including the output of inxi -Fxxz in your first post.

[johnny9308]

Thanks, Smurphos. I've started a new thread here: viewtopic.php?f=49&t=284402&p=1571489#p1571489