Failed to start Persist on ASUS Zenbook

[sergemuur]

Hello there! There are two issues on my quite a new ASUS UM3402YA with LM21.2/Win11 dual boot setup.

1. Now I have the last 0.14 bat version installed, it works as intended up to the point of rebooting into win11: after that, when I return to LM, it no longer limits the charge for some reason and I have to do "persist" command once again. Kernel and systemd requirements are met:

systemd 249 (249.11-0ubuntu3.10)
kernel: 6.2.0-33-generic

2. Although it works when not rebooted into win11, it floods the syslog file with a bunch of repeating lines in a cycle, saying it failed to run "persist" command almost every second, so the file grows in size dramatically:

Oct  2 16:09:58 serge-Zenbook-UM3402YA-UM3402YA systemd[1]: Starting Persist the battery charging threshold after multi-user...
Oct  2 16:09:58 serge-Zenbook-UM3402YA-UM3402YA systemd[1]: Stopped Persist the battery charging threshold after suspend.
Oct  2 16:09:58 serge-Zenbook-UM3402YA-UM3402YA sh[229726]: /bin/sh: 1: cannot create /sys/class/power_supply/BAT?/charge_control_end_threshold: Directory nonexistent
Oct  2 16:09:58 serge-Zenbook-UM3402YA-UM3402YA systemd[1]: Starting Persist the battery charging threshold after suspend...
Oct  2 16:09:58 serge-Zenbook-UM3402YA-UM3402YA systemd[1]: bat@multi-user.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=2/INVALIDARGUMENT
Oct  2 16:09:58 serge-Zenbook-UM3402YA-UM3402YA systemd[1]: bat@multi-user.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Oct  2 16:09:58 serge-Zenbook-UM3402YA-UM3402YA systemd[1]: Failed to start Persist the battery charging threshold after multi-user.
Oct  2 16:09:58 serge-Zenbook-UM3402YA-UM3402YA sh[229727]: /bin/sh: 1: cannot create /sys/class/power_supply/BAT?/charge_control_end_threshold: Directory nonexistent
Oct  2 16:09:58 serge-Zenbook-UM3402YA-UM3402YA systemd[1]: bat@suspend.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=2/INVALIDARGUMENT
Oct  2 16:09:58 serge-Zenbook-UM3402YA-UM3402YA systemd[1]: bat@suspend.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Oct  2 16:09:58 serge-Zenbook-UM3402YA-UM3402YA systemd[1]: Failed to start Persist the battery charging threshold after suspend.
Oct  2 16:09:58 serge-Zenbook-UM3402YA-UM3402YA systemd[1]: bat@multi-user.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 56267.
Oct  2 16:09:58 serge-Zenbook-UM3402YA-UM3402YA systemd[1]: bat@suspend.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 40844.
Oct  2 16:09:58 serge-Zenbook-UM3402YA-UM3402YA systemd[1]: Stopped Persist the battery charging threshold after multi-user.

There is a BATT folder with charge_control_end_threshold file along the aforementioned path in the 3-d line, but no BAT? directory.

I wanted to uninstall and then reinstall the whole program, but didn't find the way to do it in readme.
I'm a newbie in Linux and git, sorry if I missed sth obvious.

If there's a way to fix that, I could really use your help and guidance!

P.S. I didn't find the step of actual installation in readme, so I used one from a random site with the command:
sudo install bat /usr/local/bin
Maybe that might cause some problems?

P.P.S. Ah, yes, one more thing. I ran the suggested command in another discussion concerning Zephrus laptop, it gives me the following:

sudo systemctl status bat-boot.service     
Unit bat-boot.service could not be found.

[pepa65]

That service is now called bat-multi-user, so try: sudo systemctl status bat-multi-user.service

To uninstall the systemd unit files, do: sudo bat reset

To undo the charge threshold, do: sudo bat threshold 100

I would recommend cloning the latest version of the repo, and building from that:

clone https://github.com/tshakalekholoane/bat
cd bat
make build
sudo install bin/bat /usr/local/bin/

That should give you version 0.14, so I don't know why what you had didn't work.

Could you post the output of echo /sys/class/power_supply/BAT?

(The content of the unit files should have BATT in your case instead of BAT?...)

Did you use make build to build?

[sergemuur]

The first time I installed the program, I didn't use make build, just downloaded the binary and used the install command.
Now that you suggested building from cloned repo, I used make build.

Here's the output of multi-user status:

● bat-multi-user.service - Persist the battery charging threshold after multi-user
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/bat-multi-user.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (exited) since Mon 2023-10-02 21:49:49 MSK; 2h 5min ago
    Process: 1566 ExecStart=/usr/bin/sh -c echo 80 > /sys/class/power_supply/BATT/charge_control_end_threshold (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 1566 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
        CPU: 2ms

Oct 02 21:49:49 serge-Zenbook-UM3402YA-UM3402YA systemd[1]: Starting Persist the battery charging threshold after multi-user...
Oct 02 21:49:49 serge-Zenbook-UM3402YA-UM3402YA systemd[1]: Finished Persist the battery charging threshold after multi-user.

And the echo command's one, as you accurately guessed:

/sys/class/power_supply/BATT

I did the reset, cloned the repo, using the commands and built it there. Now Persist works after win11 reboot - that's great!
Unfortunately, syslog still produces the same lines.

Strangely though, bat -h gives me:

2023/10/03 00:19:52 parsing time "" as "2006-01-02": cannot parse "" as "2006"

and bat -v won't show the 0.14 version, giving this:

bat 
Copyright (c) 2023 Tshaka Lekholoane.
MIT Licence.

Other commands seem to work fine.

[tshakalekholoane]

Yes, that is correct. But you probably ran reset on a newer version so you might have to do it manually. Try running the following commands and then delete the /etc/systemd/system/bat@.service file.

sudo systemctl disable bat@multi-user.service
sudo systemctl disable bat@suspend.service

And just to be thorough, you might also want to delete these as well but it shouldn't be necessary (at least judging from the output you sent).

sudo systemctl disable bat@hibernate.service
sudo systemctl disable bat@hybrid-sleep.service
sudo systemctl disable bat@suspend-then-hibernate.service

[sergemuur]

It finally worked!
My syslog is at peace again:)

Thank you so much, guys, you are doing a truly great job right there.
Your enthusiasm inspires!

[tshakalekholoane]

You're welcome. Thank you for the kinds words!

[sergemuur]

Oh, sorry, I've got 1 last basic question: how do I update the program properly when a new release comes out? Do I need to run some git command to refresh the repo and then make build and sudo install or is it done easier?

[tshakalekholoane]

Yes, if you're building from source then you have to do all of that manually i.e., git pull, make build and then sudo install bin/bat /usr/local/bin/.

But now that you mention it, maybe it's something we should include in the Makefile so that it reduces to something like make install. What do you think @pepa65?

[pepa65]

Yes, make install but also make reinstall that does bat reset first.

[pepa65]

Oh, sorry, I've got 1 last basic question: how do I update the program properly when a new release comes out?

At this point you no longer need any new releases, because you've set the threshold, and you have working systemd unit files to make it persist.

But if you want to upgrade, you could do bat reset to make sure no old unit files remain, and then download the newly released binary from https://github.com/tshakalekholoane/bat/releases/download/0.14/bat (the Latest release, in the future the 0.14 will be a higher version) and then make the threshold persistent with bat persist.

[sergemuur]

Thank you for the suggestion!
Will keep an eye on your updates just in case)
Good luck!

[JM-Internet]

Hi, I upgraded ubuntu to 24.10 and now the bat command is not recognized. Also reinstalling doesn't work and the threshold from the previous ubuntu is still persistent so I cannot charge past 60% which I enabled before the ubuntu upgrade. What can I do to reset/reinstall?

[sergemuur]

Hello there, @pepa65 and @tshakalekholoane ! I've been happily using bat since you guys helped me the last time few years ago, but it seems I messed it up once more after a clean arch installation on the same machine (finally ditched Windows entirely).

ASUS UM3402YA
archlinux 6.16.1-zen1-1-zen

This time I tried downloading the binary from your releases page and using chmod and, probably, my stupid imagination.
These are the exact commands I ran:

sudo chmod +x /home/sergemuur/Programs/bat
sudo install /home/sergemuur/Programs/bat /usr/local/bin/

The program was installed and nothing seemed off (I set the threshold and ran persist), except the laptop kept charging past the set threshold. I did the sudo bat reset and deleted the initial folder in /home, also looked for the services you had pointed out the last time in this discussion, but none of the services was found.

I reinstalled bat multiple times using good old git clone and make build, but it never worked. The /etc/systemd/system/bat@.service file was properly deleted by the reset command each time.

The bat-multi-user.service is active and enabled:

● bat-multi-user.service - Persist the battery charging threshold after multi-user
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/bat-multi-user.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: active (exited) since Sun 2025-08-17 22:26:18 MSK; 3h 23min ago
 Invocation: 7e5c3f1b75c24870ab230bb48403ab11
   Main PID: 978 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Mem peak: 1.7M
        CPU: 9ms

Aug 17 22:26:18 archlinux systemd[1]: Starting Persist the battery charging threshold after multi-user...
Aug 17 22:26:18 archlinux systemd[1]: Finished Persist the battery charging threshold after multi-user.

The /sys/class/power_supply/BATT/charge_control_end_threshold file has the value of the threshold I set inside.

The only strangeness is that I haven't been able to find any other services running (like bat@suspend.service or ...hibernate etc.) except for the bat-multi-user.service.

[sergemuur@archlinux ~]$ sudo systemctl status bat@suspend.service
Unit bat@suspend.service could not be found.

Maybe it could be connected with the fact that my system is on btrfs now? I heard that it has a hard time handling hibernation and stuff.

It seems that the answer is very simple but I've run out of any ideas as to how to find it myself. Please, would very much appreciate your help yet one more time with this!

P.S. Oh, one more thing. Every time I reinstall bat, it somehow remembers the threshold I set during previous installation. By default it's not 100. Idk why the reset fails to reset it.