Frequent failure after wake from suspend

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DrHow

Frequent failure after wake from suspend

Post by DrHow »

After a restart, I can put it to sleep once and it awakens properly. If I put it to sleep a second time, then it does not awaken properly. The power comes on, but the display remains black, and it is completely unresponsive to input of any sort. (Including ctrl-alt-esc and ctrl-alt-del.) I have to power down and restart.

When it is in the improper power-on not-responsive state, I can tell that the processor is not idle because the fan eventually speeds up. The problem arises independently of whether or not any applications are running.

I was running the 4.10.0-38 kernel (64 bit) on an old Toshiba Satellite laptop.

I saw that there is a kernel update pending for the 4.13.0-43 version, so I decided to try that. The behavior changes, but for the worse! After only the first suspend, it awakens briefly and then spontaneously puts itself back to sleep after about 2 seconds. After that, an attempt to awaken it results in the same failure as before. (I uninstalled the newer kernel.)

I was running Vista on this machine. (I was not too worried about it since I don't keep any critical information on the machine, using it almost exclusively for browsing the web from my bedroom.) However, I decided that the time had come to switch to a decent maintained OS. I installed Mint in a dual boot configuration. Except for the problem I am reporting, I like it a lot. However, this sleep problem is a show-stopper for me as I normally use the machine with a large flat screen TV as monitor, well across the room, and I control it with a wireless keyboard/tablet. I need to be able to put it to sleep and awaken it remotely, which is what I had been doing reliably with Vista for years. (All my configuring and testing efforts so far have been done with the laptop's display, keyboard, and tablet.)

This cannot be a hardware problem, as suspend/awaken still work perfectly when I boot Vista. I doubt that it is relevant, but the Vista OS is 32-bit. (Since the AMD Turion processor supports 64-bit, I used the 64-bit version of Linux. The machine has only 3GB of RAM, which should suffice for my purposes.)

I would very much appreciate any suggestions about how to get around the problem. Switching to another distro (including the 32-bit version of Mint) is a lot of trouble which I would hope to avoid. (I've already made some significant effort configuring this one.)
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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wh7qq
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Re: Frequent failure after wake from suspend

Post by wh7qq »

Are you using "Suspend" or "Hibernate" functions...you say "sleep". Using the Xfce4 desktop, "suspend" saves the current desktop to memory and then puts everything into a low-power state including the monitor. The fan turns off altogether but USB is still powered as is the motherboard memory.Touching any key wakes it up to exactly where you were. "Hibernate" on the other hand, saves the desktop to the HDD or SSD and goes into a low power state (unsure if full power down or not as I don't bother with it).
DrHow

Re: Frequent failure after wake from suspend

Post by DrHow »

@wh7qq

The terms "suspend" and "sleep" are commonly used interchangeably for the same behavior. More specifically "suspend" as a verb means "put to sleep". The fact that I used both in the description of my problem does not mean that I am confused about the meaning. I did use the more nearly technically correct term in the subject line for my question.

Also, since I was talking about it working correctly in Vista when I am controlling it remotely using a wireless keyboard, there could have been no ambiguity
Last edited by DrHow on Mon May 28, 2018 4:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
DrHow

Re: Frequent failure after wake from suspend

Post by DrHow »

I went to the trouble of installing the 32-bit version of the OS. Same problem persists.

Since this is a serious crashing problem with the current version of the OS and the response to my detailed description of the problem here has been essentially nil, it occurs to me that perhaps this is not the best forum in which to be seeking help of this sort. In that case, I would at least appreciate a pointer to where I could hope to get some useful help. I would guess that whatever is going wrong is happening down at the driver level.
wh7qq
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Re: Frequent failure after wake from suspend

Post by wh7qq »

Legitimate question. You may use them interchangeably but the desktop does not in my case...two distinct functions. And by the way, your assumption that I have any notion of what Vista does or doesn't do is faulty...never used it. XP was my last dance with uSoft. OTH, you are the expert. I just made the mistake of trying to clarify your request. So sorry.
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catweazel
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Re: Frequent failure after wake from suspend

Post by catweazel »

DrHow wrote: Mon May 28, 2018 3:11 pm @wh7qq

The terms "suspend" and "sleep" are commonly used interchangeably for the same behavior. More specifically "suspend" as a verb means "put to sleep". The fact that I used both in the description of my problem does not mean that I am confused about the meaning. I did use the more nearly technically correct term in the subject line for my question.

Also, since I was talking about it working correctly in Vista when I am controlling it remotely using a wireless keyboard, there could have been no ambiguity
Suspend and sleep are distinctly different but you obviously know more than those of us who would like to help you.
"There is, ultimately, only one truth -- cogito, ergo sum -- everything else is an assumption." - Me, my swansong.
acerimusdux
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Re: Frequent failure after wake from suspend

Post by acerimusdux »

Suspend to RAM and Suspend to disk are different. So saying "suspend" in the title didn't necessarily resolve all ambiguity. Which one you use often has to be set in the bios. I gather you are talking about suspend to RAM (S3) here, though.

Problems with suspend have been pretty common over the years, and very hardware dependent. You should probably search for information specific to your actual model and hardware. More details as to the model would help, as would posting the output of inxi -Fxxz. You haven't said either which flavor of Mint you are using. Since this is quite possibly a graphics issue, the GUI might matter, though more important is probably the video card and drivers being used.

I'll also note, that on occaision power supply issues can also cause difficulty in awakening from suspend. That probably isn't the case on a laptop, but since it's old, maybe worth testing if it behaves any differntly plugged in from on battery power.
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