Re: Suspend to disk.
> >> You are probably out of luck as laptop vendors seldom test this
> >> feature under Linux, so it seldom works.
> >
> > Um, actually, that usually happens because save to disk needs some
> > sort of prepared location on disk to put everything... and most people
> > (including many vendors that preload) don't realize that, so when they
> > install Linux they don't check the safety of the hibernate partition.
>
> That may sometimes be the case but, well, not with some of the hardware
> I have had. Let me assure you that there are, out there, plenty of
> laptops where the BIOS will hang, hard, trying to suspend to disk, or to
> restore from it.
>
> Really. I know, four out of five machines I have had that didn't work
> successfully with suspend-to-disk, that was why.
I have occasionally seen boxes with a busted BIOS hang that way. It also
sometimes happens that X's idea of good suspend behavior and the BIOS
don't agree, to your disks' detriment since it hangs or "goes blind" and
you reboot :(
> Unless there was something I was missing beyond setting up the partition
> with phdisk (or whatever the tool for the hardware was) and getting it
> to happily suspend and resume from that partition under Windows...
>
> > <plug type="cheap">Of course, I know a vendor that *does* take such
> > care, since I happen to work for them. And Tuxtops offers potato
> > preloads too. </plug>
>
> Y'all don't have an Australian office, by any chance?
No (at least not yet) but we do happen to ship internationally. We do have
Australian customers so we know the right procedures to get stuff to you.
> > As for hardware vendors, I fear more *new* hardware is going to suffer
> > problems, as MSwin have changed over to ACPI entirely, so there is
> > even less incentive for them to test APM firmware well. :(
>
> Yeah, that will, indeed, suck mightily. Having seen the code that
> implements APM, though, as well as some of the other Phoenix BIOS
> code... I can't say that I am surprised it's buggy. Messy does not even
> start to cover it...
*mighty sigh* Ricoh had the very bestest BIOS I have yet seen for a laptop,
and their laptop line didn't take off, so neither did their BIOS. Unless
perhaps IBM ends up using it (since they did some work with IBM at one
point) folks like us will be stuck with what we've got.
> >> Anyway, once it's working under Windows, give it a run under Linux.
> >> If it works, it does. If not, well, there probably isn't much that
> >> can be done to fix it, I am afraid.
> >>
> >> Daniel
> >
> > This is also pretty much true - Linux is a great OS, but if your APM
> > BIOS is truly broken, there isn't a whole lot we can do about that.
>
> Yup. World of pain. :)
>
> Daniel
I have to sort of correct myself here; there is something you can do,
it's just fairly weird.
You can turn off all resemblance to APM support, compile a kernel of your
own with the ultra-experimental not-available-at-kernel.or patch for
swsusp (software suspend for non APM boxen) and hope that it works better
for you than the real thing did.
* Heather Stern * star@ many places... including Tuxtops!
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