Laptop lid linked to power management
Hi everyone,
Somehow my laptop lid has become associated with power management, so that if I push the lid further open, a log-out dialog pops up, or the laptop instantly cuts power.
I'm not sure how this started. The only thing possibly related is that I installed and ran powertop to see if I could get longer battery life.
Does anyone know what configuration causes this, and how I can change this so that my laptop lid is unrelated to power management? (Other than going to sleep when I close the lid, but I could sacrifice that if needed.)
Thanks in advance!
-Jim
In the "Power Managements Preferences", that you can find in MATE's Control Center, you can set the action performed "When laptop lid is closed" ("On AC Power" and "On Battery Power").
I'm using XFCE rather than MATE but XFCE's power manager has options for what to do when the laptop lid is closed (Switch off dislay, Suspend, Hibernate, Lock screen) for both plugged in and on-battery modes. None of these address my laptop's behavior, which is to *shut off when moving the lid more than a centimeter*. And I mean shut off instantly, not a controlled power-down sequence. Just: power is gone.
Inversely, when the laptop is off I can open the lid and the power button lights up and the laptop boots up as if I had pressed the power button. Sometimes I have to wiggle the lid a little to trigger this.
I had understood the problem is with the interrupter on the lid: it must be damaged. I thought you could just tell the OS to "do nothing when laptop lid is closed" (and could use Fn+Fsomething, or the menu, to suspend). Isn't "do nothing" a possible action in Xfce's power manager? It is in MATE's.
That said, the laptop "shuting off instantly" suggests the OS cannot prevent it: that behavior apparently bypasses the OS, as pressing for a long time the power button does. You should then try to discover where the interrupter is and block it on the "lid opened" position.
This seems to be more a hardware issue rather than a software issue. I'd try another distro just to confirm this behavior is the same with any other distro (debian or trisquel live should do the trick)
Thanks, this makes sense when you put it that way. And in fact I have an update: as I was trying to figure out where interrupts might be, I set it down and a screw fell out. It secures a corner of the bottom--and other things, apparently. I screwed it back in tight and now my problem is gone. This corner is where the power button is located so I think it did something, somehow.
Thanks again!