Setting the battery charge level within Linux

It's same for me. I would like to set battery charge mode in Linux as well. Is there any documentation to this feature? ACPI settings?

I would very much like this too.

I am an Ubuntu 16.04 user on the XPS 13 9360 and usually keep the max level at 80%.

However, when I am traveling, I want to set this to 100% without rebooting.

Very annoying that Linux support is half assed on these machines even though they are advertised as "Developer Edition".

Hey folks,

Unfortunately there isn't a pretty GUI on Linux for controlling this, but the "Dell Command" suite does provide a command line option to enable it.

Download links for Dell Command Configure are available here for Ubuntu and Redhat:

http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/enterprise-client/w/wiki/7532.dell-command-configure

This is the particular option you're looking for:

https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/us/en/04/command-configure-v4.3/dellcommandconfigure_rn_4.3/release-type-and-definition?guid=guid-4c68a415-6090-4a19-b365-3cd05f1494f3&lang=en-us

There are a variety of other battery related options you can also configure using this tool.

Hi there dell-mario I

Thank you for the download link and also the link to the command used for setting this up. I have downloaded and installed the Dell Command | Configure for Ubuntu 16.04 from the links you provided however I can't seem to figure out how I should be passing the commands to it using the terminal in Ubuntu.

I made some searches trying to find out any documentation about it on the Dell website or on the internet but unfortunately I couldn't find anything. I recently gave up Windows and I am migrating over to Linux completely and so my knowledge of Ubuntu is still limited. I found the cctk.exe file under /opt/dell/dcc but can't seem to pass any commands to it using the terminal.

FYI, I have the Dell XPS 13 9370 with Ubuntu 18.04 installed.

Any help is very much appreciated.

Cheers. 

You can find the description of the cctk command syntax here

https://topics-cdn.dell.com/pdf/command-configure-v3.3_release-notes_en-us.pdf

I specified the charging limits by sudo /opt/dell/dcc/cctk --primarybatterycfg=custom:50-90

Regards, B.

Thank you so much for the reply and more importantly the sample command! I can confirm that the command, with my preferred battery percentages, works just fine on my setup as well. 

even though I found a more recent version of the user's guide you had linked above in my research I could not find the "primarybatterycfg" command in the long list of the commands.

2nd time writting this post, because Dell Community web page has forgotten my last! (Login fails and retries deleted my previous writing.)

This command does not work for me.

It is not listed in the help

123@DELL-XPS13:~$ sudo /opt/dell/dcc/cctk --primarybatterycfg=custom:50-85

The option 'PrimaryBattChargeCfg' is not available or cannot be configured
through this tool.

123@DELL-XPS13:~$ sudo /opt/dell/dcc/cctk --help

About my system: using Ubuntu 18.04 and Dell XPS13; (It is L322X, I think.) Install of cctk worked.

What to do?

Does the ability to make that setting exist in the BIOS? if it's not listed in the command help and the command says "not available" it may be that your XPS 13 does not support it.

The next best thing if the laptop does not support this is to use a switch you can control via the laptop and turn A/C power on and off at predetermined thresholds. I did that with a Lenovo Y50. Let me know if you want more details.

Hello,

yes, you are right. Probably this option is not possible with my model of XPS. It is not possible to set it in the BIOS.

I have seen in my research, that there was even a bug fix about the battery live. But it was only for newer models and my CPU was not affected.

Thanks for your advice.

Okay, so it seems, that there is no easy solution to save life of the battery of my Dell XPS and Ubuntu operating system.

The hard way still remains. I have a 3 1/2 year old Lenovo Y50 which controls an external switch to maintain the battery between 30% and 60%. I checked earlier today and the battery is at 65% capacity which seems decent for a laptop that has been plugged in for most of the 3 1/2 years. I can provide additional details if that would be helpful.

I spent a few hours today, exploring all the options including Dell Command Configure and updating my BIOS, changing the BIOS settings, etc. I have definitively concluded that my Dell Laptop (E6410) does not and will never have this BIOS setting, therefore the Dell Command Configure utility cannot set this setting (because it is a BIOS setting command line utility).  Even though the documentation for the Dell Command Configure lists all possible settings, not all settings are available for every Laptop.

Dell Command Configure is available in the Ubuntu repositories (and therefore I installed it with synaptic package manager in Linux Mint).  Running it from path:

/opt/dell/dcc

Like so, lists all available settings for your BIOS on your laptop:

sudo ./cctk

It is a generic Dell BIOS command line utility that only lets you set the settings that are actually in your BIOS on your laptop.  If you upgrade your BIOS and new settings are added in that BIOS version, the same settings will be available to set through Linux / windows from Dell Command Configure. 

I now believe that the charge controller is built into your laptop hardware (motherboard) and if the BIOS setting is not available to configure the max charge and min charge values, then there is no way for (Linux OS / Software / BIOS) to control these settings. The max charge / min charge settings must be a feature of newer chargers / motherboards and their corresponding BIOS ROMs.  The only way to get the ability to control the charge is to upgrade the motherboard with one that has this feature built into it (and the BIOS).

The easiest way to change this setting if you have it in your BIOS is to go into the BIOS and change it there. If the Command Configure can't change the values then, maybe your BIOS is password protected?  The read-only values are listed with an asterisk (*) when you run it with no parameters.

Is there any way to tell the battery not to charge?

When powering from an external USB battery pack, I want to power the laptop only, not to charge its batteries. That's easy to do on thinkpad, but with dell, all I have is
/opt/dell/dcc/cctk --PrimaryBattChargeCfg=Custom:50-55
but this only works if the battery is still over 55%.
Is there anything better, or that's the best there is?

Is there any way to do this on an inspiron 3525 or latitude 5400?

After installing dell-command-configure on Latitude E5540 running  Manjaro it seems to accept :

sudo cctk --PrimaryBattChargeCfg=Custom,50,80

But the system won't "respect" these changes sadly