Even when my laptop is plugged in, it's stuck in an idle state(neither charging nor discharging) and the battery indicator is stuck on estimating and I am using Ubuntu GNOME
Best Answer
On some systems the embedded controller that performs the battery level handling can get stuck. In these cases I've resolved the issue by removing all power from the laptop and removed the battery for a few minutes to ensure that the embedded controller has powered off. Placing the battery back in the laptop has resolved the issue.
This is known bug that affects HP, Compaq, Dell and other manufactures. This is because of a change made in gnome-power-manager where by the estimate is done on time remaining, rather than percentage. This change does not play nice with some hardware and is why you are seeing (estimaing...) constantly.
At this time, I believe there is no fix available. However you can click on the estimating... and it will bring up a more detailed view of your battery info, which will display the percentage of charge.
If it works with command, then some thing wrong with its autostart.
As it was checked, it isn't running on start up. Verify the existence of:
/usr/share/upstart/sessions/indicator-power.conf
description "Indicator Power Backend"
# Want to move to indicator-services-[start|end], but that's not all
# there yet. Use the signals that exist today for now.
start on indicators-loaded or indicator-services-start
stop on desktop-end or indicator-services-end
respawn
exec /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-power/indicator-power-service
/etc/xdg/autostart/indicator-power.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Indicator Power
Exec=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-power/indicator-power-service
NotShowIn=Unity;
NoDisplay=true
StartupNotify=false
Terminal=false
This works for me with a fresh Ubuntu 14.04, Modifing indicator-power.desktop for autostart conditions similar to the other indicators. (Submitted bug reportlp#1330302)
Best Answer
On some systems the embedded controller that performs the battery level handling can get stuck. In these cases I've resolved the issue by removing all power from the laptop and removed the battery for a few minutes to ensure that the embedded controller has powered off. Placing the battery back in the laptop has resolved the issue.