Polybar battery module not loading

[goldenwitch]

Hi everyone; sorry to make this post since I’ve seen my fair share of Reddit and forum posts here on how to fix it but nothing’s worked yet…so here I am!

Like a lot of other people, I’m struggling with getting Polybar to recognize the battery module in the config.ini file.

Here’s what the battery portion looks like in my file:

[module/battery]
type = internal/battery
full-at = 100
low-at = 20
battery = BAT1
adapter = AC
poll-interval = 5
time-format = %H:%M
format-charging = <label-charging>
format-discharging = <label-discharging>

And here’s what the ls -1 /sys/class/power_supply/ command retrieves:

$ ls -1 /sys/class/power_supply/
AC
BAT1

This is the specific error I’m getting from Polybar:

error: Disabling module "battery" (reason: No suitable way to get current charge state)

And yes, I promise it’s in the module list!

modules-left = xworkspaces xwindow
modules-right = battery filesystem pulseaudio xkeyboard memory cpu wlan eth date

In a Reddit post I stumbled across someone asked the OP if their battery folder had a file called energy_now, which mine does have. But OP had a different problem that was fixed through different means, so I’m at a loss again.

I’m new to Linux so apologies if this is a pretty straight-forward answer, I just don’t have much of a background. Here’s to learning though!

[petsam]

@goldenwitch

No suitable way to get current charge state

@goldenwitch

their battery folder had a file called energy_now, which mine does have.

It could be a polybar issue with new laptop models. Please, post info about your system.

I would suggest you post a bug report at polybar bug tracker.

[goldenwitch]

Thanks for replying, I appreciate it! My laptop is a refurbed Panasonic Let’s Note NX4. According to backmarket these are from 2012? The laptop uses an intel i5-5300U processor (not sure if that’s relevant here but just in case…)

I’ll make a bug report in case this doesn’t help.

[petsam]

@goldenwitch

My laptop is a refurbed Panasonic Let’s Note NX4. According to backmarket these are from 2012?

I have nothing to comment, apart from this vendor is not exactly a traditional PC company, whatever might that can mean.

Unless you can do a good troubleshooting, inspecting journal and other logs, I would suggest you use some alternative solution, like cbatticon.

[elio-in3x]

I think that you must define <label-charging> and <label-discharging> with something like :

label-charging = " %percentage%% "
label-discharging = " %percentage%% "

You can even add custom icons or text in this label.

[goldenwitch]

I tried this out, sadly it didn’t work, but thanks for the suggestion. I’ll probably try my hand at the troubleshooting thing later and submit a bug report.

EDIT (this specific part isn’t applicable to your response but I didn’t want to double post): This specific model looks like it has the ability to swap out the external battery kind of like the earlier ThinkPads could, could that have something to do with it??

[elio-in3x]

Does it work with this module (you will probably need to install acpi) ?

[module/battery-alt]
type=external/script
exec=acpi | cut -d ' ' -f 4 |grep -E "*%" 2>/dev/null
interval=30
tail=true

[goldenwitch]

I think this fixed it!! Thank you so much. The order of the modules seems kind of weird, but that’s a task for later.

Also, cbatticon works perfectly.

Thank you everyone!