CachyOS / CachyOS/distribution

[Bug]: power-profiles-daemon treats wireless mouse battery as system battery, so defaults desktop to balanced/powersave

Open
#573 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
bug
Dominant language
No language data
Stars
27
Forks
2
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

### Kernel

7.2.3-1-cachyos

### Desktop Environment / Window Manager

KDE Plasma

### CPU

Intel Xeon W-2140B

### GPU / Driver

AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 / amdgpu

### Description

AI helped me with this text, but I tried to make sure there's no babble or lack of clarity - my mouse caused me all this trouble, so I'd like to fix it for everybody ;-)

`power-profiles-daemon` defaults to `balanced` on this battery-less desktop (iMac Pro 2017). All 16 CPU cores run on `powersave` governor and wifi power save is enabled, causing repeated 5GHz signal drops on `brcmfmac` (BCM4364). macOS on the same hardware has no wifi issues.

The only entry in `/sys/class/power_supply/` is `hidpp_battery_0` — a Logitech G Pro mouse. PPD treats it as a system battery and sets `battery_aware=true`:

```
$ cat /var/lib/power-profiles-daemon/state.ini
[State]
battery_aware=true
Profile=balanced
```

KDE also hides the power profile toggle on desktops without a battery, so there's no GUI way to discover or fix this.

Note: this is not the same as #60 (where PPD didn't support the hardware at all).
PPD works fine.

Even worse and almost funny, is that this mouse is a Logitech G Pro used wired via USB! No dongle, I lost it years ago... but the kernel still exposes its internal rechargeable battery, that I don't even use, as hidpp_battery_0.

### Steps to Reproduce

1. Install CachyOS on a desktop with no battery (iMac Pro)
2. Have a (technically wireless but doesn't need to be) Logitech mouse connected (shows as hidpp_battery_0 in /sys/class/power_supply/)
3. Run `powerprofilesctl get` — shows `balanced`
4. Run `cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor` — shows `powersave`
5. Run `cat /var/lib/power-profiles-daemon/state.ini` — shows `battery_aware=true`

### Expected Behavior

Desktop with no system battery should default to `performance` profile, or at minimum not treat a wireless mouse battery as a system battery for power profile decisions.

### Actual Behavior

`balanced` profile active, `powersave` CPU governor on all 16 cores, wifi power save enabled causing 5GHz signal drops.

### Logs / Error Messages

https://paste.cachyos.org/p/6fce153.log

### Additional Context

Workaround: `sudo powerprofilesctl set performance` and adding `wifi.powersave = 2` to a NetworkManager drop-in config.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Research direction

Start by tracing how power-profiles-daemon classifies entries under /sys/class/power_supply/, especially hidpp_battery_0, and compare that with the reported powerprofilesctl and state.ini behavior. Reproduce on a battery-less desktop with the Logitech mouse connected; done means the mouse battery is not treated as a system battery and the desktop receives the expected profile behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
linux
Domain
operating-systems
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Active
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
50/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.