linuxmint / linuxmint/cinnamon
Power Manager applet shows hex/null bytes for battery vendor/model from UPower
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- Dominant language
- JavaScript
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- Merged PRs (30d)
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Description
The Power Manager applet shows garbled text as the battery device name. This is because UPower returns vendor/model as raw SBS hex strings with null bytes instead of decoded text.
UPower output:
- vendor:
0x53 0x4D 0x50 0x00 0x32 0x30 0x31 0x39 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00(should be "SMP") - model:
0x4C 0x31 0x39 0x4D 0x33 0x50 0x46 0x34(should be "L19M3PF4")
Full output: https://files.catbox.moe/ga748g.txt
The vendor and model strings from UPower contain raw hex values and null bytes that should be stripped/decoded before display. The applet should sanitize these strings (e.g., filter out non-printable characters and trim null bytes).
See also: the popup content does not fit on screen (issue #13855) which compounds the problem — users cannot even see the garbled name properly.
Contributor guide
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First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start with the Power Manager applet entry point that reads battery vendor and model values from UPower. Trace how those strings reach the displayed battery name, then verify that raw hex and null bytes are no longer shown while normal names remain readable. Confirm the result with the applet's existing behavior or relevant manual check.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- javascript
- Domain
- desktop
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 2/5
- Estimated time
- 1-3 hours
- Activity status
- Quiet
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 64/100