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I've got a problem booting. Ubuntu 16.04 on my Dell E6520 laptop boots normally when plugged in. However, when booting on battery power it shuts down entirely. Sometimes it makes it as far as the Ubuntu loading screen, but then stops and the laptop shuts off entirely.

I tried searching and found this results for a Lenovo Y560, though I'm not really knowledgeable about kernels so I'm not sure if a similar fix would be relevant for a Dell.

What can I do to boot while on battery power? Thanks.

Updates

I've also tried booting from USB and recovery mode while on battery power, both failed.

I've also noticed when I boot from AC power, then unplug the battery, sometimes the system shuts off on its own, but only after I do something.

Reproduction steps:

Shutdown at login screen issue

  1. Boot from AC power
  2. Wait for login screen
  3. At login screen, unplug AC power
  4. Type password and click login
  5. Immediately after clicking login, the laptop shuts down

I set a timer and waited 10 minutes after step 3 to see if the battery was the issue, but it only shuts down if I take an action, in this case clicking the login button.

Shutdown using Chrome on battery power

  1. Boot using AC power
  2. Wait for login screen
  3. Type password and click login (still from AC power)
  4. Wait for desktop to load, then disconnect AC power
  5. Open Chrome
  6. Type http://www.google.com in the address bar
  7. Click Go or press CTRL+Enter, and the laptop immediately shuts down

I left the laptop powered on at step 5, thinking maybe it was a battery issue. It ran for almost 3 hours until the battery was completely drained.

It seems the laptop only shuts down when on battery power after some type of user action, or during boot from battery power.

I'm stumped, any thoughts on what the cause is?

Community
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ak_
  • 61

3 Answers3

1

I've been facing a similar problem with Ubuntu Mate 20.04 recently and after a couple of days and countless attempts to find the solution (adding dis_ucode_ldr in grub did not help) finally discovered a simple one that has worked for me.

Try editing grub adding the nomodeset option in the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT (if present), so that it reads as follows:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset"

Hope that might help someone as well.

More details on nomodeset here: What does `nomodeset` do

Eliah Kagan
  • 119,640
Ariari
  • 11
0

You can add this line

dis_ucode_ldr

into your grub file /etc/default/grub as a root user of course.

This allows booting after a bad microcode update and fixes the non-booting issue when you are not on AC Power. I've seen this issue a lot of times on some Dell computers on Ubuntu.

Dubu
  • 939
johary
  • 1
0

I had the same issue on a Lenovo G50-45, the fix for this was so simple it made it complicated.

Go to 'System Settings' in Ubuntu, go to 'power' and change the option below "On Battery Power" so they are the same as the options below "When plugged in".

Let me know how you get on! :)

proprocastinator
  • 187