suspend vs hibernate?

BoyWonder410 · #1 29th September 2007, 02:09 AM

I'm using gnome on a HP Pavillion dv9000 series laptop with a nvidia geforce go 7600. I have compiz fusion installed and working fine.

this is a relatively fresh fc7 install.

I originally set gnome to hibernate when the laptop lid closed, but i don't think it was working. every time i would close the lid and put the laptop in my bag it would be really hot when i took it out, which I interpret to mean that it was not actually hibernating. When i would open the lid the display would be off (not just empty or black, but, off) and it would not turn back on

I set gnome to suspend instead, and it is no longer really hot when i take it out of the bag, but when I open the lid the display is black, (not off) the cursor works and you can see the cursor move around the screen when the mouse moves, but the display stays black and i have to manually reboot the machine.

I have a number of questions,
1. what is the difference between hibernate and suspend, i assume that hibernate backs up to the hard drive and suspend goes to ram, does that mean that hibernate uses less power?
2. Is there a FAQ or a walkthrough I could use to get my hibernate working? I'd like to conserve as much battery power as possible, as this laptop has a 17 inch screen and is a beast for power.
3. If hibernate is prohibitivly difficult to fix, is there an easy fix for suspend?

I have searched the forums and google but am relatively inexperienced with linux on laptops... any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

kizwan · #2 29th September 2007, 08:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BoyWonder410

1. what is the difference between hibernate and suspend, i assume that hibernate backs up to the hard drive and suspend goes to ram, does that mean that hibernate uses less power?

Standby/Suspend:-
Standby is a light “sleep” mode you can put your computer in. When you resume from Standby mode, you'll be exactly where you left off – all your work will still be on the screen.
While in Standby mode, your computer needs power to maintain its state. So for a laptop or desktop, if you're plugged in to wall power, then you're fine, but if you have a power failure, you may lose the Standby mode and any unsaved work. (Plus, you're consuming slightly more electricity while in Standby mode than while in either Hibernate or Turn Off mode.)
On a laptop, if you're not plugged in to the wall and you go into Standby mode, your laptop battery is being used and therefore there is a certain limited time you can stay in Standby mode before your battery is completely drained and the computer loses it's state. Then you'll be potentially losing work and doing a full reboot. So you can see Standby mode should be considered a temporary state you should place your computer in, when you expect to be coming back to it within a few hours.
Certain laptops will occasionally have trouble resuming from standby state.

Hibernate:-
When a computer is Hibernating, it's the same as off, from a power consumption point of view. Your computer's memory is actually flushed out to disk just before powering off and stays there until you turn the computer back on. When the computer comes back on, it's exactly the way you left it. A computer can stay in hibernation mode for a much longer period of time than standby mode when unplugged, and it uses less electricity. It takes slightly longer to resume from Hibernation than from Standby. However, it's more secure because everything‘s written out to disk, and you're not dependent on a good power source while in Hibernation, as you are with standby.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BoyWonder410

2. Is there a FAQ or a walkthrough I could use to get my hibernate working? I'd like to conserve as much battery power as possible, as this laptop has a 17 inch screen and is a beast for power.

I don't know about this. But you can try update your system, which I assume you already done it. Bottom line is, this have to do with hardware & driver.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BoyWonder410

3. If hibernate is prohibitivly difficult to fix, is there an easy fix for suspend?

Did you try to manually hibernate your laptop? Just click at the icon at taskbar and choose "Hibernate".

BoyWonder410 · #3 29th September 2007, 03:12 PM

Manual hibernation does not work either.

if my problem could be based on bad drivers, which drivers should I check, and/or which drivers could be causing this problem?

and my FC is up to date.

kizwan · #4 29th September 2007, 04:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BoyWonder410

Manual hibernation does not work either.

if my problem could be based on bad drivers, which drivers should I check, and/or which drivers could be causing this problem?

and my FC is up to date.

Sorry, I don't know which driver/hardware that need to check. Try post your complete spec of your system.

RJFUatHOME · #5 29th September 2007, 07:35 PM

You could take at look at your pm-suspend.log in /var/log/.

It might point you in the right direction as to what's going wrong.

BoyWonder410 · #6 29th September 2007, 07:50 PM

here are the contents of the /var/log/pm-suspend.log file

Sat Sep 29 03:35:31 CDT 2007: running suspend hooks.
===== Sat Sep 29 03:35:31 CDT 2007: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00clear =====
===== Sat Sep 29 03:35:31 CDT 2007: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/01grub =====
===== Sat Sep 29 03:35:31 CDT 2007: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/05led =====
===== Sat Sep 29 03:35:31 CDT 2007: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/10NetworkManager =====
===== Sat Sep 29 03:35:31 CDT 2007: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/20video =====
kernel.acpi_video_flags = 0
===== Sat Sep 29 03:35:31 CDT 2007: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/49bluetooth =====
===== Sat Sep 29 03:35:31 CDT 2007: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/50modules =====
===== Sat Sep 29 03:35:31 CDT 2007: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/55battery =====
===== Sat Sep 29 03:35:31 CDT 2007: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/60sysfont =====
===== Sat Sep 29 03:35:31 CDT 2007: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/65alsa =====
===== Sat Sep 29 03:35:31 CDT 2007: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/90clock =====
===== Sat Sep 29 03:35:33 CDT 2007: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/94cpufreq =====
===== Sat Sep 29 03:35:33 CDT 2007: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95led =====
===== Sat Sep 29 03:35:33 CDT 2007: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/99video =====
Sat Sep 29 03:35:33 CDT 2007: done running suspend hooks.

RJFUatHOME · #7 29th September 2007, 09:35 PM

It's funny because there don't appear to be any suspend errors, of course there should be a resume section afterwards. So not to point out the obvious but you aren't resuming correctly if at all!

I was hoping that there would be some obvious listed error during resume. No such luck.

Don't know if it'll help, but I would try switching to Metacity as the window manager and temporarily trying the NV driver and see if it's not a graphics driver type issue. Wish I could be of more help, I'm having a suspend and resume issue in F7 as well on a desktop PC that worked beautifully on FC6, but at least I can see the suspend error causing it, but it's still going unresolved for now.

BoyWonder410 · #8 7th October 2007, 11:44 AM

i think that my suspend issues are related to compiz-fusion. disabling compiz-fusion makes my suspend work. Don't know why.

***glennzo*** · #9 7th October 2007, 11:53 AM

Let me jump in here if I may, not to hijack the thread but because I'm playing around with suspend / hibernate also and know little about it. If I close the lid on my laptop on a fully running Fedora 7 install does it suspend or does it hibernate? Who decides? Me or the system? Do I need to tell the system what I expect when I close the lid? I closed it yesterday for a couple hours and when I opened it up the system came right back to where I left it in seconds. Perfect. I might add that the power was plugged in, not on battery.

jlc · #10 7th October 2007, 03:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by glennzo

Let me jump in here if I may, not to hijack the thread but because I'm playing around with suspend / hibernate also and know little about it. If I close the lid on my laptop on a fully running Fedora 7 install does it suspend or does it hibernate? Who decides? Me or the system? Do I need to tell the system what I expect when I close the lid? I closed it yesterday for a couple hours and when I opened it up the system came right back to where I left it in seconds. Perfect. I might add that the power was plugged in, not on battery.

Code:

$ gnome-power-preferences

Is were you set them. More than likely with it plugged in, you just have "Blank screen" set. The heading for "On Battery Power" is what you want to try suspend/hibernate when you close your lid.

jlc · #11 7th October 2007, 03:23 PM

Something that is currently working for me for the most part is "acpi_sleep=s3_bios" to you my kernel line in grub.

The suspend works fine waking up using that, however sometimes it seems that a reboot doesn't finish going down correctly. So there is still some oddness going on

EDIT: I take this back, it looks like something between the latest kernel/nvidia/pm-utils updates that changed the suspend for me, not adding anything.

kizwan · #12 7th October 2007, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by glennzo

Let me jump in here if I may, not to hijack the thread but because I'm playing around with suspend / hibernate also and know little about it. If I close the lid on my laptop on a fully running Fedora 7 install does it suspend or does it hibernate? Who decides? Me or the system? Do I need to tell the system what I expect when I close the lid? I closed it yesterday for a couple hours and when I opened it up the system came right back to where I left it in seconds. Perfect. I might add that the power was plugged in, not on battery.

You need to tell (configure) the system what you want the system to do after you close the lid. Suspend or hibernate. My system seem doesn't like to suspend but hibernate is perfect.