Weird overnight battery drain with Mint 21

[Foxy Stoat]

Hi, been using Mint 20 with no problems. Recently I installed Mint 21, going the full installation from Live USB route rather than the upgrade tool. Since then I've noticed quite an uptick in battery drain during usage. Worse though, is that upon shutdown, my laptop seems to be draining overnight. The battery percentage was on 22% upon shutdown; when I booted it up 12 hours later, it was down to 8%. This was never a problem with Mint 20; it always booted to exactly what I had left it as. I'm not sure why Mint 21 is suddenly doing it; I have a theory it might be going to some strange hibernation mode rather than full shutdown, even though I'm clicking the shutdown option. I had some tabs open in Firefox; I shutdown the laptop, booted it back up again, re-opened Firefox and all my tabs restored, even though I specifically have "Open previous windows and tabs" under the General Startup settings UNTICKED. However, I don't know how best to test or what logs I should be reading to see what Mint is doing when it tried shutting down.

Here are my specs:

Code: Select all

System:
  Kernel: 5.15.0-43-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.2.0
    Desktop: Cinnamon 5.4.9 tk: GTK 3.24.33 wm: Mutter vt: 7 dm: LightDM 1.30.0
    Distro: Linux Mint 21 Vanessa base: Ubuntu 22.04 jammy
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Acer product: TravelMate B117-M v: V1.24
    serial: <superuser required> Chassis: type: 10 serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: Acer model: Lepus_BA v: V1.24 serial: <superuser required>
    UEFI: Insyde v: 1.24 date: 10/25/2018
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT1 charge: 38.0 Wh (68.6%) condition: 55.4/54.7 Wh (101.2%)
    volts: 16.0 min: 15.2 model: LGC AC14B8K type: Li-ion serial: <filter>
    status: Discharging
CPU:
  Info: quad core model: Intel Pentium N3710 bits: 64 type: MCP
    smt: <unsupported> arch: Airmont rev: 4 cache: L1: 224 KiB L2: 2 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 868 high: 1316 min/max: 480/2560 cores: 1: 701 2: 880
    3: 1316 4: 577 bogomips: 12800
  Flags: ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Atom/Celeron/Pentium Processor x5-E8000/J3xxx/N3xxx
    Integrated Graphics
    vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: i915 v: kernel ports: active: eDP-1
    empty: DP-1, DP-2, HDMI-A-1, HDMI-A-2 bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:22b1
    class-ID: 0300
  Device-2: Realtek HD WebCam type: USB driver: uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-4:3
    chip-ID: 0bda:57f1 class-ID: 0e02 serial: <filter>
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.3 driver: X: loaded: modesetting
    unloaded: fbdev,vesa gpu: i915 display-ID: :0 screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1366x768 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 361x203mm (14.2x8.0")
    s-diag: 414mm (16.3")
  Monitor-1: eDP-1 model: Chi Mei Innolux res: 1366x768 hz: 60 dpi: 136
    size: 256x144mm (10.1x5.7") diag: 294mm (11.6") modes: 1366x768
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 405 (BSW) v: 4.6 Mesa 22.0.5
    compat-v: 3.1 direct render: Yes
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Atom/Celeron/Pentium Processor x5-E8000/J3xxx/N3xxx Series
    High Definition Audio
    vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel
    bus-ID: 00:1b.0 chip-ID: 8086:2284 class-ID: 0403
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.15.0-43-generic running: yes
  Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 15.99.1 running: yes
  Sound Server-3: PipeWire v: 0.3.48 running: yes
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Wireless 7265 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel pcie:
    speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 02:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:095a class-ID: 0280
  IF: wlp2s0 state: up mac: <filter>
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 465.76 GiB used: 34.75 GiB (7.5%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Western Digital model: WDS500G2B0B-00YS70
    size: 465.76 GiB speed: 6.0 Gb/s type: SSD serial: <filter> rev: 20WD
    scheme: GPT
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 273.95 GiB used: 34.7 GiB (12.7%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda7
  ID-2: /boot/efi size: 96 MiB used: 51.3 MiB (53.4%) fs: vfat
    dev: /dev/sda1
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 2 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2
    file: /swapfile
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 58.0 C mobo: N/A
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Repos:
  Packages: 2504 apt: 2486 flatpak: 18
  No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/inkscape_dev-stable-jammy.list
    1: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/inkscape.dev/stable/ubuntu jammy main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mdoyen-homebank-jammy.list
    1: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/mdoyen/homebank/ubuntu jammy main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/obsproject-obs-studio-jammy.list
    1: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/obsproject/obs-studio/ubuntu jammy main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list
    1: deb http://packages.linuxmint.com vanessa main upstream import backport
    2: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy main restricted universe multiverse
    3: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-updates main restricted universe multiverse
    4: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
    5: deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy-security main restricted universe multiverse
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vivaldi.list
    1: deb [arch=amd64] https://repo.vivaldi.com/stable/deb/ stable main
Info:
  Processes: 232 Uptime: 5m wakeups: 1 Memory: 3.75 GiB
  used: 1.94 GiB (51.7%) Init: systemd v: 249 runlevel: 5 Compilers:
  gcc: 11.2.0 alt: 11 Shell: Bash v: 5.1.16 running-in: gnome-terminal
  inxi: 3.3.13

I googled and a few people have similar battery drain issues with Ubuntu 22.04. If anyone knows how I might be able to check why I'm suddenly getting this overnight drain on Mint 21, that would be brilliant.

Edit: I've just realised as well Mint seems to be creating a swapfile. That's weird, because I have an 8 gig swap partition that's been there since Mint 20. But for some reason, Mint 21 doesn't want to use it. So this also makes me think the system is automatically going into some weird hibernation mode upon shutdown.

[Cosmo.]

It looks, as if the computer does not really turn off, if you shut down.
Hibernation can get excluded in this context: At first, because hibernation is not usable by default in Mint, at second, because a hibernated system uses exactly as much poser as a shut down system, namely zero.
Also the behavior of FF indicates, that the the system is not really shut down; I guess, it is suspended. But usually there should be a LED or something, which indicates the state. So look for it.

Perhaps this clears things a bit: Instead of shutting down reboot the computer with the live system and then shut down with this. Is it still draining over night?

[antikythera]

Also check in BIOS and make sure that USB always on for charging is turned off. The wording may vary slightly but that is the most common actual cause of battery depletion when laptops are off for any period of time. You may have more than one cause of drain in play.

you can alter the swap details in /etc/fstab. first open Disks and check the mount point of the traditional swap partition. then edit /etc/fstab and replace /swapfile (or the swapfile's UUID) with it

[Cosmo.]

you can alter the swap details in /etc/fstab. first open Disks and check the mount point of the traditional swap partition. then edit /etc/fstab and replace /swapfile (or the swapfile's UUID) with it

I would do it the other way round: Remove (or comment out) the entry for the swap partition and leave the entry for the swap file.
8 GB for swap is in every case on a computer with 4 GB RAM a waste of space, even if hibernation would be wanted.

[Foxy Stoat]

I think it might have resolved itself; I shut it down last night at 48%. I've just booted it back up 7 hours later at 49%, so it might be okay now. I found out how to mount the swap partition so I think that's sorted. One thing I also did was drop into Windows for a bit (it's a dual boot system). It might be my battery stats were a bit out of whack, and this might have fixed it. I'll keep an eye on it and see if the overnight drain has gone now.

I did drop into BIOS but couldn't see anything relating to USB charging; I don't think this laptop has it.

[Swerve-MS]

I have been looking at this battery drain after shutdown issue and cannot find a fix that works. BUT yesterday i found something online regarding shutdown and it is a acceptable workaround (for me anyway). Try the following:
Do not shut down your laptop. Instead select Logout option. Then press Control + Alt + F1 which takes you to a prompt. Enter your username and password.
At the $ prompt type sudo su and enter your password which will get you to a root prompt #. Then type init 0 and press enter. This will shut down the machine and your battery will not drain while your laptop is off.

Summary of steps:
Log off
Ctrl +Alt + F1
Log in
Get a root prompt by typing sudo su and then enter your password
Type init 0 and press enter.

This works on my ASUS E210 running Debian bookworm/sid with updated BIOS/UEFI firmware downloaded from ASUS site.
Please advise if this work around stops your battery drain after shutdown issue.
If anyone knows of a proper fix please advise. Many thanks Swerve-MS.