Battery drain in shutdown...?

[horvathcsabalaszlo]

[Description of the bug or feature]

Anyone else experiencing battery drain while the device is off? As per Google this is a common thing on Windows too (and as i seen, there was no real solution), but i want to as if the kernel developers found any root cause or solution.
The device got a replacement battery, and it drains in 1-2 days even when in shutdown. Don't know what was the situaton before, as i got it used.

Thanks for any info :)

• Hardware model: Surface Pro 4
• Kernel version: Latest
• Distribution: Debian

[KTibow]

Something that worked on my SP7:
Do connected USB devices have power when it's supposed to be shut down? In that case try holding down the power button until they no longer do.

[horvathcsabalaszlo]

Hi,

Thanks! I never checked this :) Will come back after i tried.

And, i bet the camera and maybe some more stuff is also hanging on USB in the Surface.

[horvathcsabalaszlo]

...tested. USB power is cut when the device shuts down. Despite this, it drains the battery :(

[oleid]

[Description of the bug or feature]

Anyone else experiencing battery drain while the device is off?

Yes, me!

* Distribution: Debian

ArchLinux

I thought the battery was simply broken, however, since I learnt about the drain while off I'm positive that this is the root cause.

I'm wondering if we're doing something like connected standby instead of powering off. But I'm unsure how to verify.

[DasSkelett]

I notice this also since a few weeks, in my case I'm triple booting Windows, Kubuntu 22.04 and Archlinux, on my Surface Go (1).
After cleanly shutting down the device, it shows an empty battery when trying to power it on again after two or three days.
Two things I remember changing in the last few weeks is inserting an SD card and installing Archlinux as third OS.

[horvathcsabalaszlo]

I only use Debian (and before Kubuntu) , but i noticed this since the beginning.

[CoolestEnoch]

I also fount this problem with my Surface Go 3 running with Arch Linux. After I run powroff in console, the device SEEMS to be shut down, but actually it DOESN'T. It keeps screen off, keyboard off even USB off. I always power off my surface in this way at night and get to work at the second day's morning, but I found the location where the CPU at is pretty hot. I tried to power it up again with a short hold on the power button, it didn't powered up. But if I hold the power button for a while, it starts. But when it starts, the battery only remains 30%.

It seems like not the problem with linux-surface kernel, when I was using linux-zen kernel, it also appears to be like this.

This problem always appears when I did sleep action.

The most STRANGEST thing is that I tried to find something in kernel log, but NOTHING more can be found after the shutdown message was printed out onto the screen (I deleted kernel parament silent).

And....it doesn't happen when I power off it from Windows...

How do I do for this
I always run reboot in console, then I power it off when the device booted into rEFInd(I use rEFInd to boot grub and then boot linux). If the device turned off the screen but doesn't boot again, I will try the SysRq key to force it reboot then turn it off in rEFInd.

[ddurdle]

I have 3 Surface tablets. 2 are Surface GO 1. On the one that I updated to the latest Debian 12.2 with Linux 6.1.0-13-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.55-1 (2023-09-29) x86_64 GNU/Linux, I've been noticing this 100% of the time when I power off using wayland "power off". Not happening with an identical Surface GO 1 that is not yet updated to 12.2 (it's running an older Debian 12 release). I suspect it might be an update recently introduced. Likewise a Surface Pro 7 running a less than latest Debian release (but is running Surface kernel 6.3) has never had the issue either.

It's very frustrating to be using the device, getting it to 100% in battery, "pwer off" and come back 2 days later in a "pinch" and find you can't turn on the tablet without plugging it in because it's completely drained itself.

All three Surface tablets are running the exact same OS image (I cloned the install to all 3). The only thing different is the 1 surface tablet I updated to the latest 12.2 back in Sept and I've seen the power drain to 0% the three times I booted the device.

NO usb devices attached while powered off, it drained itself completely with and without the surface go keyboard attached.

As is the case on all my tablets, in the BIOS I've disabled unused hardware devices (camera, SD card slot). The SD card slot is notorious for causing sleep issue (high power drain in sleep). Sleep has nothing to do with this situation with "power off", but I'm just adding these additional details.

[horvathcsabalaszlo]

Can you share details? Like kernel version, kernel parameters... Would be interesting.
Mine is constantly updated but don't remember the exact version. (Maybe Deb. 12 with Gnome mobile)

[ddurdle]

Checking in from surface go that has the issue:

Linux 6.3.3-surface #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Wed May 17 20:49:28 UTC 2023 x86_64 GNU/Linux
(also issue with kernell -6.1.0-13-amd64)

Debian 12.2 - last updated 10/20

Will chime back in on other devices with their particulars

[ddurdle]

Surface go with no power off issue.

Debian 12.0 last updated 04/28
Linux 6.1.0-7-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.20-2 (2023-04-08) x86_64 GNU/Linux

Running no special boot flags.

I'll be doing a full comparison of the bios next.

[ddurdle]

I did a comparison between BIOS configs between the two surface tablets. all the same configuration details (all the same devices enabled/disabled). Only 1 difference. The surface go that has the issue is on an older firmware:

bad surface
system uefi 1.0.32
intel management engine 11.8.50.3460
system embedded controller 1.0.9.0

good surface
system uefi 1.0.34
intel management engine 11.8.90.3987
system embedded controller 1.0.9.0

I still have the older kernel available on the updated surface, so I'm going to try running it and evaluating the issue.

I can also try to make some space available and load the identical 04/28 install from the good surface on the bad surface to rule in / out debian updates being a culprit.

[ddurdle]

Seriously suspecting it is a hardware / firmware issue. I'm going to try updating the firmware on the suspect surface tablet. Even if I boot into BIOS and power off from the BIOS, it drains power.

[oleid]

[Description of the bug or feature]
Anyone else experiencing battery drain while the device is off?

Yes, me!

* Distribution: Debian

ArchLinux

I thought the battery was simply broken, however, since I learnt about the drain while off I'm positive that this is the root cause.

I'm wondering if we're doing something like connected standby instead of powering off. But I'm unsure how to verify.

meanwhile I even wiped my linux installation from the disk, installed re-windows 10 from official media (the HW is too old for win11) and tried certain suggestions I found for windows users - to no avail. I have the drain on windows, too. So I guess there is little one can do, it must be in the firmware.

[ldup]

Same problem. Surface Pro 4. Searching for "surface battery drain while off" shows that a large number of users of Surfaces have it too.
No solution so far.

I don't think it was there at the beginning but started at some point after firmware updates.
Sadly there's no option to downgrade UEFI and IME to test older firmwares

Looks pretty much as a way to kill the battery and force buying new hardware....
But this is so frustrating that a number of people, including me, will never ever again buy Microsoft hardware.