Ubuntu – How to make the battery indicator always show the laptop battery by default instead of the mouse battery

For IBM Thinkpads there exist a module tp_smapi to control charge thresholds. It you fix the start charge threshold at 60% and stop at 95%, the battery will charge upto 95% and stop charging (It will not discharge either). Once the AC power goes off the laptop will discharge but will not start recharging, even if plugged into AC, till the battery has discharged below 60%. Its useful feature to increase battery life as Li-ion batteries are best stored at 40%. If you don't often go off AC power the battery will remain at 40-60% as per threshold set by you and hence last for a long time. I'm not aware if the same module would work for other laptops as well. Sam - IBM Thinkpad - R52/R60.

Note: Try steps 4/5 first, it may be fixed with 1st hit.

Below the extended instruction to debug the problem with the indicator.

1. Check if indicator-power-service is running:

   ps ax | grep indicator-power
   

2. If it's running, try reset its settings then restart it:

   dconf reset -f /com/canonical/indicator/power/
   pkill -f indicator-power-service
   

   No success, locate it then try it from terminal (looking for any errors in output):

   sudo updatedb; locate -r indicator-power-service$
   

   My system is 64bit, So:

   /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-power/indicator-power-service
   

   If it works with command, then some thing wrong with its autostart.

3. 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
   

4. This works for me with a fresh Ubuntu 14.04, Modifing indicator-power.desktop for autostart conditions similar to the other indicators. (Submitted bug report lp#1330302)

   sudo nano /etc/xdg/autostart/indicator-power.desktop

   Remove:

   NotShowIn=Unity;
   

   Replace it with:

   OnlyShowIn=Unity;XFCE;GNOME;
   AutostartCondition=GNOME3 unless-session gnome
   

5. Logout/Login

Well if it didn't work:

1. Try purge it then reinstall it:

   sudo apt-get remove --purge indicator-power
   sudo apt-get install indicator-power
   

   Reboot, Check again

2. No success, as workaround you can run it this way (you may close terminal after this):

   /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-power/indicator-power-service & disown $!
   

   & run it in background
   disown $! command to detach a process for current terminal, $! variable that hold PID of last process run in background

   Or better if add it to user startup applications, see How do I start applications automatically on login?