this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
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Laptop battery goes flat, when powered off, only on Debian (lemmy.ml)
submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml to c/linuxhardware@programming.dev
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Hi all,

I had this laptop (Lenovo Carbon X1 Gen 6), and when it had Debian, it would just go flat on sleep, and even when powered off. So strange. I checked all BIOS settings etc, but could never figure it out.

I moved it to Fedora, and it was perfect. Battery life was boosted like crazy, acted as it was meant to.

However, I have tomove away from Fedora, due to them dropping X11 (it's an accessibility issue I'm facing with my tools) and I forgot about said issue with Debian.

Back on Debian now, woke up, powered on laptop, which was fully charged last night, and it's flat again.

What is it, that Debian is doing differently, that is making it go flat, when powered off?

Please note, I am doing a proper shutdown. Not just closing lid, sleep, hybernate, etc.

Any advice greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!

UPDATE: I booted into a fedora live disk, and shutdown. This time the battery did not go flat at all when shutdown, indicating that it is absolutely debian related, not BIOS or anything else.

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[–] BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

I think he first thing to check is, is the OS actually shutting down? Or is it appearing to shut down but actually staying on and running down the battery due to some error. I.e. Wheb you come back to it, the laptop just happens to be off as the battery finally ran out some.poijt over night

I'd check the log files first to see what happens when you shut down. Is debian shutting down or is it stuck with one process running? Does the system off time match the time you sent the shutdown message?

The other thing to consider here is not that the battery is running down but rather that it is not charging up properly. The OS may be telling you the battery is full when in fact it's not so you're actually always teetering on the edge of 0%. I.e. Maybe youve stimbked across a bug with power management in Debian with your hardware.

Given you had no issues with Fedora, maybe use a USB stick with Fedora on it to boot the laptop up and see what it says about battery. Does it match what Debian told you? If not then maybe close to diagnosing the problem. If they do match have to keep looking.

[–] makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago

OK, a little bit of an update. I booted into the fedora live USB disk. I then shut down from there. A day later, and the battery is still on 98%. This shows that it is actually debian causing the issue, not a system issue like the BIOS or similar. Now, just to try and figure out what it is with Debian and shutdown.

[–] makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Thank you for your very detailed response.

Here are some logs for the shutdown, showing recent startups and shutdowns:

$ last -x | grep -E 'shutdown|reboot'
reboot   system boot  6.1.0-37-amd64   Thu Jul 17 10:27   still running
shutdown system down  6.1.0-37-amd64   Thu Jul 17 10:20 - 10:27  (00:07)
reboot   system boot  6.1.0-37-amd64   Thu Jul 17 07:24 - 10:20  (02:56)
reboot   system boot  6.1.0-37-amd64   Thu Jul 17 07:22 - 10:20  (02:57)
shutdown system down  6.1.0-37-amd64   Wed Jul 16 08:35 - 07:22  (22:47)
reboot   system boot  6.1.0-37-amd64   Wed Jul 16 06:03 - 08:35  (02:32)
reboot   system boot  6.1.0-37-amd64   Wed Jul 16 06:01 - 08:35  (02:33)

Here are the complete, detailed logs, showing that a full shutdown is happening: https://pastebin.com/sxrdZRHc

Regarding the battery, I will have to make up a Fedora boot stick to test the battery percentage. It is definitely charging, as I can unplug it and it will last a good long time, whilst using during the day. It does not last nearly as long as on fedora, but it is definitely running for many hours.

Update : I created a fedora bootable use stick, and it reports exactly the same battery.

I am completely stumped, but it is still happening