Re: Inspiron 8200 + FC3 + suspend/resume

From: Dave Kristol (dmk_at_acm.NOSPAM.org)
Date: 12/30/04 

Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 09:48:07 -0500

On 12/29/2004 09:12 AM, Pierre Asselin wrote:
> Dave Kristol <dmk@acm.nospam.org> wrote:
>
>
>>I've been running RH9 on my i8200 for many months now, and it has been working
>>great. During a bout of temporary insanity, I clean-installed Fedora Core 3 on
>>my i8200 yesterday. The installation went well, just about everything works
>>great out of the box, the system looks and runs great. But....
>
>
>>Suspend/resume does nothing. Now, APCI gets configured by default.
>>(More later.) Several people on the Yahoo! linux-dell-laptops group have said
>>they turned off acpi and dropped back to APM for power management (acpi=off
>>resume=force in grub.conf), and then things worked a little. That did not seem
>>to be so for me.
>
>

Thanks for taking the time to provide such an extended answer. I really know
very little about ACPI (or APM). There seem to be bits and snatches of
information laying around on the net, but I haven't figured out how they all get
pieced together to make things happen. Can you provide any good pointers for a
tutorial that isn't aimed at kernel hackers and that actually provides specific
guidance for an experienced user to actually do things?

> Your laptop probably has a buggy DSDT, so you should start there.

Can you tell me on what you base that conclusion? How would I know if it's
buggy? When I have ACPI enabled, I see extensive stuff under /proc/acpi that
looks reasonable (to me, at least). So does the stuff under /sys.

Is there magic somewhere that should automatically handle suspend/resume, as
opposed to there being scripts in /etc/acpi/events? (My laptop's fans and speed
stepping appear to work by magic already.) By the way, I wrote a primitive
events script that was able to detect my laptop's "lid" event, so I think acpi
is working at some primitive level.

>
> http://acpi.sourceforge.net/dsdt/index.php
> http://acpi.sourceforge.net/dsdt/view.php?manufacturer=Dell&name=Inspiron+8200
> http://www.intel.com/technology/IAPC/acpi/downloads.htm
> http://gaugusch.at/kernel.shtml
>
> Have fun.

I've got BIOS A10, which is in the list. I had intended to upgrade to A11,
which isn't in the list, but I couldn't. (Long, irrelevant story.) In any
case, I'm unclear what I'm supposed to do with a DSDT (original *or* custom).

>
>
>
>>As for ACPI, can anyone point me at information about writing APCI
>>scripts, especially with examples? I found useful information at
>><http://acpi.sourceforge.net/documentation/sleep.html> which suggests
>>that writing "suspend" to /sys/power/state should cause the machine to
>>suspend, but when I tried, nothing happened. Suggestions?
>
>
> If your kernel has swsusp/pmdisk (finally merged?) or swsusp2 (still a patch?)
> the most reliable combination is a suspend to disk, for example (pmdisk)
> echo -n shutdown > /sys/power/disk
> echo -n disk > /sys/power/state
>
> Suspend to RAM and standby may or may not work.
>
> You need to reset your system clock after a resume. The swsusp2
> download page offers a "hibernate script" that automates this task
> and handles many workarounds and hacks around the rough edges.
>

I think the information for my nVidia display driver (from nVidia) claims it
works with APM and not necessarily ACPI. Because I know I had APM working with
RH9, I'm more inclined to pursue getting APM to work. If I can accomplish that,
*then* maybe I'll experiment more with ACPI. Any advice?

Thanks again.
Dave Kristol

Relevant Pages

  • Re: [PATCH 4/4] Remove obsolete piece of PM documentation
    ... -Linux system and how to add power management support to Linux drivers. ... -Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI). ... -is possible with BIOS controlled APM. ... Registering suspend notifiers in device drivers ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • APM good, ACPI bad (2.6.2-rc1 / p4 HT / Uniwill N258SA0)
    ... Patch enclosed. ... Recompiled 2.6.2-rc1-mm3 without ACPI, with APM. ... I #if 0'd a prohibition on suspend with SMP. ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: FreeBSD 6.1-STABLE: Unexplained power off
    ... ACPI/APM, ... a complaint by apm_saver refusing to load because APM wasn't loaded. ... it never is if ACPI is loaded, ... It wouldn't reach the suspend state correctly, ...
    (freebsd-stable)
  • Re: apm vs. acpi
    ... On Wed, 2004-12-29 at 08:48 -1000, Amy M wrote: ... > do suspend to ram, I have to forgo acpi and use apm. ...
    (Fedora)
  • Re: FC3 Suspend Problem on Laptop
    ... > to ram under ACPI yet. ... > restore of all functionality after suspend I suspect. ... not sure if I should be using ACPI or APM. ... shut off the laptop to transport it, it takes a long time to boot and I ...
    (Fedora)