Hibernation change [Solved]

[T J Tulley]

Using LinuxMint-9 (with Windows-7 mostly unused) on a laptop with Pentium dual-core 2.2 GHz cpu, 4 GB RAM, 500GB hdd

I have recently installed my 3rd Isadora - this time from a freshly downloaded .iso file on a new DVD. I did this primarily because the previous installation refused to download the proprietary STA driver for the installed wireless card in my Dell 1750 laptop. Now that is installed and again I have a wifi connection.

However, now when I hibernate, all my workspace open windows disappear when I restore, and I have to open them again. The whole point of hibernation is to avoid this procedure.

Can anyone please advise whether I can recover effective hibernation?
Edit: see last post - use the command!

Yours hopefully,

Theo Tulley.

[nukm]

You should start the process to repair by ensuring that your swap partition is at least as large as your RAM. A typical Redhat client install on a box with 4gbRAM will be a tad more than 5 gb swap if one lets the installer do the choosing.

There has to be ample room for all that "stuff" to take a nap. Beyond that, you need to Google around, although the Redhat Knowledge base might have some help there.

The older swap partition info is not necessarily true for modern laptops that need a nap.

[T J Tulley]

Thanks - I have far more than the recommended swap space, and Hibernate has always worked with previous installations. I'm attaching a screenshot of gparted showing where these are - (btw, /dev/sda8 is the previous installation, /dev/sda9 is current). RAM is 4 GiB.

Yours hopefully,

Theo Tulley.

[nukm]

Back to square one.
I currently do not have a laptop loaded with Linux, as I gave that one to someone. I have one with Vista and one with Win 7. However, since hibernation/suspend has been an iffy problem for years with Linux(much better now), the policy I followed with that laptop was simply to either shut it down or leave it on. I set it to shut down if the lid was closed. It was a Toshiba and got confused somewhere in the BIOS boot order if I tried to simply use suspend/hibernate. Obviously, that is not an ideal situation. That was an older laptop and it had a convoluted boot process.

You might find a clue in your logs. I'm sure it is frustrating to have it working on earlier releases and not now. However, if I understand your original comment, you are not losing data, but the workspaces "disappear" and you have to give them a "click"? On my Toshiba, suspend/hibernate sent the thing off to Mars and beyond.

I also note that it took 3 installs to get wireless up which puts suspend/hibernate somewhat in the same category. As you know, with laptops, one may and another may not. Not at all what you are looking for. Sorry. Also, if a Linux install is working, updates may send it out of orbit - especially kernel updates.

You might check the Centos.org - here - http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Laptops and also check the Redhat Knowledge base. Here is something more specific - http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/54610. Also, https://help.ubuntu.com/9.10/hardware/C ... nding.html And this https://help.ubuntu.com/9.10/hardware/C ... ral-method

There has just been a kernel update which may have caused the issue. Obviously, you'll have to do some detective work. The Ubuntu articles particularly may help. Since you have so many swap partitions - are they all active for the most recent install? That is a bit of overkill. I generally use the same swap partition for all the distros installed - if possible. That would save you about 18 GB, disc space enough to use for a distro testing.

I guess it just "works" in Win 7? Since you have the other install in, check those logs for a clue also. Two of the above articles will help you isolate the issue perhaps. The Ubuntu has a script you can download to use for analysis of your system.

If I have understood you - hibernate/suspend is working with no data lost - but you have to click on a workspace to have it appear?

[T J Tulley]

Thanks again - the position is that I have set my panel preferences to provide 6x6 Compiz workspaces; I generally open applications in them in a familiar pattern so that I can rapidly navigate between them. Previously in Helena and Isidora they have remained populated through a hibernation and restore process; now they are all unpopulated when I restore from hibernation. I use Desktop links and application icons so it is easy to open any of my usual applications or folders when required.

The reason for my over-generous swap space is that for my recent installation I thought it would be better to have available swap space adjacent to it, rather than on the other side of the previous installation which I decided to retain. This was to minimize travel of the disk-reading head. I expect to use the intermediate partitions for the next distribution when it becomes a stable release; no more swap space will then be required.

BTW, the first install of Isidora found its own internet connection with no problems, as have previous versions from Bianca onwards. I crashed that by an ill-considered command (which made /bin unreadable for the boot process) and I did the second install in the same partitions. I never got a wifi connection working in that.

BTW - (2), I find that hibernate survives an intermediate boot into Windows: according to the documentation this isn't supposed to work!

For the present, I am using Suspend for short absences - I find that my nearly-new laptop copes with that quite generously.

With many thanks,

Yours sincerely, -

Theo Tulley.

[nukm]

Compiz - video card. There is another post with ATI fglrx issues with hibernate. If you have an ATI card that could be part of the issue if fglrx is installed. I don't generally activate Compiz - so there ya go. I'm shaky enough as it is and do not need visual disturbances to boot.

You might try running the script from the Ubuntu page to isolate the process. Nothing in your logs?
I think suspend/hibernate will likely be the only time swap is used with 4gb RAM - perhaps intensive video processing would need swap. Have you ever caught the system using swap for apps?

You might consider a bug report or seeing if it is listed.

If you solve it, please post as I'd like to know the solution.

[T J Tulley]

It suddenly occurred to me that hibernate might work as it did before if I use the command $ hibernate - this isn't installed in Mint versions by default, but advice to do so appears in response to the command.

Hey Presto! It works - wjth all my compiz settings preserved.

As previously, the command runs showing a warning:
"hibernate:Warning: Tuxonice binary signature file not found."

It doesn't seem to affect performance, but can anyone explain it? A search produced nothing.

With many thanks,

Yours sincerely, -



Theo Tulley.

[T J Tulley]

I must add that ~$ sudo hibernate has worked smoothly about twice, and crashed 2 or 3 times - once offering me a terminal in which I couldn't find any commands to do anything useful. I had to power-off and re-boot from those.

However I'm becoming quite slick at restoring my preferred Compiz screens.

Does anyone know how the missing file reported when the command runs can be installed?

"hibernate:Warning: Tuxonice binary signature file not found."

Yours hopefully, -

Theo Tulley.

[nukm]

You might work your way through these links - https://ssl.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbwssl.cgi. Open Google might provide more hits. I don't use Google directly.

The issue involves a longstanding bug and also the bootloader. I read #1 and also #3. Of course, GRUB is now changed, so the info in #1 would be outdated. Unfortunately, that does not answer your question directly. Applying the "resume" mentioned the the GRUB config file might help, with the caveat that it is GRUB2 and things have changed?

The intermittent working and then not working probably means the problem lies elsewhere.

Since it was a Debian bug, you might find a workaround by searching the Debian forum. However, by the time Ubuntu and Mint get through with Debian, a fix for Debian might not also work in the derivatives. Incidentally,the response to the bug report of #3 is delightful.

Your posting is #20 on the list in the link. #19 might also give you a clue.