Package: hibernate Version: 1.91-2 Severity: wishlist The hibernate package, in its wonderful new form where it automatically tries susp2 then swsusp (which is in the stock Debian kernel) then save to RAM, is great. It "just works" on a stock Debian install, with no recompilation or complex contortions. It does however require a tiny bit of setup, and to this end I would suggest a brief file explaining to users what they need to do.
Here is my attempt. I'm sure it could be improved, eg by allowing hibernate to do the resume= bit automatically by editing hibernate's config files instead of configuring the boot loader itself manually as I have done. ---------------------------------------------------------------- $ cat /usr/share/doc/hibernate/HOWTO.Debian.swsusp ---------------------------------------------------------------- To get the "hibernate" command to work on a stock Debian machine, you need to do a small amount of setup. This file attempts to walk you through the process. We assume you are running a stock Debian kernel, and that hibernate will be defaulting to the "swsusp" method. **** INSTALL AND REMOVE PACKAGES First, you *must* have the following packages installed/removed: install: hibernate (version >= 1.91) install: initramfs-tools initrd-tools install: udev (reasonably recent, eg version >= 0.093) remove: yaird install: linux-image-XXX-YYY (with XXX >= 2.6.8) Second, if you are running a kernel installed while yaird was installed, you *must* reconfigure that kernel so its initrd.img is rebuilt without the use of yaird: dpkg-reconfigure linux-image-XXX-YYY **** REBOOT You may now reboot into your new kernel. **** IDENTIFY YOUR SWAP PARTITION When awakening from hibernation, you need to pass the boot option resume=/dev/hdXX to the linux kernel, where /dev/hdXX is your swap partition, as this is where the state of the suspended system is stored. You can figure out your swap partition using the command egrep swap /etc/fstab or swapon -s **** CONFIGURE BOOT LOADER TO PASS OPTION RESUME= The resume= option is harmless if the machine is not suspended, so you should modify your boot scripts to always pass that option. How to do this depends on which boot loader you use. If you run lilo, add the line append="resume=/dev/hdXX" at the top of the file /etc/lilo.conf and run the command lilo If you run grub, edit /boot/grub/menu.lst to include the line # defoptions=resume=/dev/hda1 immediately following the line ## e.g. defoptions=vga=791 resume=/dev/hda5 and run the command update-grub **** TEST THAT HIBERNATION WORKS At this point, you should be able to run hibernate and it should do some magic suspending and then halt. When you reboot it should magically awaken from its hibernation. **************************************************************** **** QUESTIONS Instead of /dev/hdXX, your swap partition might be of the form /dev/sdXX. That is okay. **** TROUBLESHOOTING: HARDWARE ISSUES AFTER AWAKENING Some kernel modules need to be unloaded prior to hibernation. This is largely preconfigured, but some carelessly built hardware, for instance most Dell laptops (Dell is well known for sloppy engineering) require that particular modules be unloaded. For example, on my Dell X200, a particularly worthless piece of crap laptop which is also surprisingly slow, the 1394 (firewire) interface fails after hibernation. This was cured by adding the line UnloadModules ohci1394 ieee1394 to /etc/hibernate/common.conf immediately following the line # UnloadModules snd_via82cxxx usb-ohci -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
