[plug] power saving features? sleep etc.

[Brad Campbell]

Craig Ringer wrote:
> Sham Chukoury wrote:
> There's an swsusp implementation in the 2.6 kernel that works pretty 
> well for many, and an external one at swsusp.sf.net that gets extremely 
> good ratings from a lot of people.
> 
> Some users get better results if they switch away from X before 
> hibernating. Unloading certain modules and bringing down network 
> interfaces can also help. I find everything "just works" myself.
> 
> Additionally, I hear software suspend is currently more robust in 2.4 
> than 2.6. It works perfectly for me in 2.6 so I'm not complaining, but 
> its worth keeping in mind for if you have trouble.
> 
>> Last time i
>> tried the feature (swsusp?), it managed to suspend properly, but failed
>> to resume. That was back on kernel 2.6.0 or 2.6.1.. I might try it again
>> some time, with 2.6.6. :P
> 
> 
> Worth a try - its REALLY nice to be able to completely hibernate the 
> machine. I just need to try out the compressed RAM dump support, and see 
> if there's a patch out there that makes the RAM freeing a bit less 
> agressive (slower suspend/resume, more immediately useable machine after 
> resume).

On 2.4 with swsusp2 and zlib compression enabled I can completely save the entire contents of my 
512mb of ram, usually with about a 40-60% compression ratio. On resume the machine is completely 
responsive and works just like it did when I shut it down.

Before I upgraded to the 2.4.26 kernel, my 2.4.25 kernel had in excess of 40 suspend/resume cycles 
on it. I can't even remember the last time I rebooted the machine.

I even suspend it to boot into win2k or dos for testing stuff, and then reboot into linux to pickup 
where I left off.

2.6 is completely disfunctional on my laptop, I have issues with swsusp, the radeonfb driver, the 
synaptics touchpad driver, the winmodem (which works under 2.4), my cardbus SATA card and my cardbus 
USB2 card. Under 2.4 all of these besides the cardbus SATA card work flawlessly. I have not yet 
managed to come up with a viable reason to upgrade on my laptop.

I have to run it on my server for a >2TB filesystem, and for that 2.6.5 works reasonably well once I 
figured out how to workaround the firewire bugs, but 2.6.6 has bugs in the driver for my promise 
SATA card and won't even boot.

<falls to knees in praying position> Please give me a stable 2.6 kernel that works at least as well 
as 2.4 for slightly non-mainstream stuff.

Brad