03-08-2018
Many years ago, while I was working at Sun Microsystems, Inc. on adding POSIX-conformance into SunOS 4.1, I was making changes to the OS and utilities during the day and running complete builds of the system overnight (starting a build just before I left work in the evening). This worked fine for several weeks until one Monday night when the system died at about 8:30pm killing the build-in-progress. There was no core dump, no indication of any hardware problems, and restarting the build when I got to work Tuesday morning completed normally (taking a little over three hours to complete).
The same thing happened the next three days in a row, with the system always dying sometime between 8:20pm and 8:40pm.
I decided to stay at work late Friday evening to see if I could figure out what was causing the crashes. I went to the bathroom at about 7pm so I would be sure that I could be at my computer by 7:15pm and would be able to stay there until I found out why my computer was dying every night. When I got back to my office five minutes later, I found that my computer had been unplugged by a member of the cleaning crew so he could plug in the vacuum cleaner they used to clean the hallway and offices where my office was located. (The way my office was arranged left a power strip close to the hallway while other offices in my area had their power strips in less accessible locations.) I unplugged the sweeper, plugged my computer back in, and waited for the cleaning guy to come back to my office.
I found out that:
- the cleaning crew comes in an hour and a half earlier on Friday that they did Monday through Thursday,
- they got a new vacuum cleaner on Monday with a cord that wouldn't reach from the plugs in the conference room to the other end of the building, and
- unplugging a computer is inconsequential to a janitor if doing so allows him to sweep the carpets at the end of the hallway.
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LEARN ABOUT DEBIAN
wmbattery
WMBATTERY(1x) WMBATTERY(1x)
NAME
wmbattery - dockable battery monitor
SYNOPSIS
wmbattery [options]
DESCRIPTION
wmbattery is a battery monitor. It is used to visually display the system's battery status.
wmbattery can get battery information using HAL, APM, ACPI, or the SPIC controller in some Sony laptops. You need to build your kernel with
support for at least one of these for the program to work. wmbattery is dockable using WindowMaker and AfterStep window managers; under
other window managers wmbattery appears as a nicely-sized 64x64 application.
wmbattery displays the status of your laptop's battery in a small icon. This includes if it is plugged in, if the battery is charging, how
many minutes of battery life remain, battery life remaining (with both a percentage and a graph), and battery status (high - green, low -
yellow, or critical - red).
ELEMENTS OF THE DISPLAY
The wmbattery display consists of these elements:
dial The large dial at the top of the display shows battery life remaining.
time display
The time display, right under and in the middle of the dial, shows how many hours and minutes of battery life is estimated to remain
at the current rate of use.
If ACPI is used and battery is charging, the time display will instead show a countdown (starting with a minus sign) of how many
hours and minutes it is estimated to take until the battery is fully charged.
power cord
The small icon of a power cord plug, in the bottom left, tells if the laptop is plugged into wall power. If so, it will be lit.
charging indicator
The lightning bolt icon, to the right of the plug, tells if the battery is being charged. If so it will be lit and will connect the
plug to the battery.
battery icon
The battery icon, to the right of the lighting bolt, shows the percentage of battery time. If the battery is removed the icon will
be dimmed. If the computer is low on power the battery will turn yellow; if the computer is critically low on power and about to die
because of it, it will turn red.
OPTIONS
-h Display list of command-line options.
-w secs
Pause this many seconds between updates.
-d display
Use the designated X display.
-g +x+y
Specify geometry. This specifies position, not size.
-b battnum
Display the given battery. Only of use with the HAL or ACPI interfaces on systems with more than one battery. The default is to dis-
play the first battery found.
-l percent
Set the percentage at which the battery is considered to be running low. By default, this percentage is determined automaticall, and
you shouldn't need to set it. If you set this, you should probably also set the -c switch.
-c percent
Set the percentage at which the battery is considered to be critically low. By default, this percentage is determined automati-
cally, and you shouldn't need to set it. If you set this, you should probably also set the -l switch.
-e wmbattery contains code for estimating the time remaining before discharge, and until full charge, and this code is used if no other
source of this informaton is available. This switch makes wmbattery use its time estimation code even if some other estimate is
available.
-s granularity
Ignore fluctuations less than the specified granularity percent when estimating time. (Implies -e)
-a file.au
Play the specified au file (by sending it to /dev/audio) when the battery is low.
AUTHOR
Joey Hess <joey@kitenet.net>
WMBATTERY(1x)