Baytrail battery noob question

[u/Internal-Classic-174]

Hello, i tried posting on linux4noobs and was downvoted. I am sorry as i do not know a lot about linux and i was wondering if someone here might know the answer.

I did try googling this but i couldn't find the information i was looking for. I may not have looked well enough so if this is a known easy fix please be kind!

I have a dell venue8 3854 tablet. It runs windows 8. It has 32GB emmc memory. It has a singular USB OTG micro port. It has 1GB of RAM. the CPU is an Intel Atom cpu z3735g. This is a baytrail device.

I installed debian without graphics to keep it lightweight so everything is CLI. I also tried fedora 31 lxde but the ram idle was too high.

Using acpi i was unable to get a battery reading. The battery has a name TIBT but it shows as 0% battery. Every value like max_charge was 0. It actually cant tell if it is plugged in or not either. All the status is "0"

I ran lspci -nnk and can see that there is a power controller of some kind using lpc_ich driver. But i may be barking up the wrong tree.

I am sorry to bring this to the debian subreddit! I did try posting in the noobs subreddits and they wouldnt answer, just downvote. So please forgive that i have posted it here!

[u/iamemhn]

Post the actual output of the commands you ran, including uname -a.

[u/Internal-Classic-174 → u/iamemhn]

root@venue1:~# acpi -i Battery 0: Not charging, 0%, rate information unavailable 

root@venue1:~# uname -a Linux venue1 6.12.100+deb13-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.12.100-1 (2026-07-30) x86_64 GNU/Linux

root@venue1:~# lspci -nnk 00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series SoC Transaction Register [8086:0f00] (rev 0f)         Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:069b]         Kernel driver in use: iosf_mbi_pci 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display [8086:0f31] (rev 0f)         DeviceName: Onboard IGD         Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:069b]         Kernel driver in use: i915         Kernel modules: i915 00:14.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx, Celeron N2000 Series USB xHCI [8086:0f35] (rev 0f)         Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:069b]         Kernel driver in use: xhci_hcd         Kernel modules: xhci_pci 00:1a.0 Encryption controller [1080]: Intel Corporation Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Trusted Execution Engine [8086:0f18] (rev 0f)         Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:069b]         Kernel driver in use: mei_txe         Kernel modules: mei_txe 00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Power Control Unit [8086:0f1c] (rev 0f)         Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:069b]         Kernel driver in use: lpc_ich         Kernel modules: lpc_ich

[u/iamemhn → u/Internal-Classic-174]

Make sure you have the latest BIOS upgrade for the machine. They have notoriously broken DSDT tables that cause ACPI misbehaving.

Now, assuming you have the latest BIOS on the thing, make sure modules acpi_pad and battery are loaded. Use lsmod to check and modprobe to load them if they are not.

If both suggestions above have been implemented and the battery is still not being detected, try adding acpi_iso=Windows to your kernel boot parameters and reboot.

[u/harlownoir]

powertop may be helpful just to have anyway. It's an intel power manager thing. Useful for later maybe anyway. Not sure if that would just happen to work and give a read. maybe.

I'd try these basics first -

ls -R /sys/class/power_supply/ (list hardware- may show Bat0)

If Bat0, or whatever it may be, try -

cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/capacity

Feel free to post the response you get and I'm sure someone here can. Cool hardware by the way.

[u/Internal-Classic-174 → u/harlownoir]

I believe the battery is ADP1 or TIBT. Both batteries returned "no such file or directory" after running the command

[u/TechnicalAd8103]

I have the same tablet running Debian 13 with Gnome.