Tag: Linux

Any Linux experts in the audience? Problems with Suspend

Posted on by Nimgimli

I had to work last night, and before work I was messing around with a laptop, so very little gaming to speak of. When my frustration peaked I did play a little Diablo 3 which felt pretty cathartic, honestly.

So I’m vexed by Linux and this laptop. I have an old Lenovo V570 that was cheap when I bought it a long time ago (it came with Windows 7 pre-installed, that’s how old it is). I had it set up to dual-boot into Linux Mint and Windows 10 Preview. Since Win10 Preview isn’t a thing any longer, the other day I decided to reformat everything and make the laptop a dedicated Linux machine.

I’ve tried two distributions, Ubuntu and Linux Mint and they both have the same problem: the laptop won’t wake up from Suspend. (Granted Mint is based on Ubuntu so I shouldn’t be surprised they have the same issue.) So I close the laptop, then open it and I just get a black screen. Fans might be running but there’s nothing I can interact with. I have to cut power and restart. For all I know maybe the screen just isn’t waking up…it’s hard to say.

If this was a desktop machine I’d probably just roll with it but for a laptop it’s an issue. I looked at /var/log/pm-suspend.log and I don’t see any errors, so I think the problem isn’t the suspend itself, but waking from suspension. I’ve Googled and tried lots of things but it seems like Linux Suspend issues have been with us a long time and it’s tough to get current info. I’ve checked the size of the swap partition, put esoteric scripts in /etc/pm/sleep.d/, tried installing various kernels… so far nothing works.

Currently I have Mint 18.1 installed. Before wiping the laptop I think I had Mint 16.something and it had no issues with Suspend. Now I wish I’d just re-sized the partition rather than wiping everything.

At one point I did see a tip to add something to grub to force it to wake the keyboard. The theory was that when you opened the laptop when it was suspended, the keyboard didn’t ‘wake up’ so it was effectively dead so there was no way to wake the machine. I lost that page in a reboot though and haven’t found it again yet!

I’m not averse to just trying a different distro, if someone can recommend a good distro for noobs that isn’t based on Ubuntu.

Or if anyone has any suggestions on how to fix this issue I’d appreciate that too. In truth I can only work on it so long before frustration mounts since everything I try has to be tested by Suspending the machine, finding that the fix didn’t work, then killing the power, then booting everything up again. It’s pretty time consuming.

Reiser leads police to body

Posted on by Nimgimli

The strange and fascinating case of Hans Reiser continues, though it seems things are drawing to a close. He’d been convicted of murdering his estranged wife, Nina, but maintained that he was innocent and had nothing to do with her appearance. Then, two days before sentencing, he led authorities to a body (not yet confirmed to be her) buried in a shallow grave a mile from where Nina was last seen. Details: Convicted husband leads authorities to body

I’m not sure why this case has grabbed my attention. It’s a sad fact that people are murdered all the time. I guess it’s because Reiser is such a geek. I have this weird mental image of us geeks as basically good and non-violent people for some reason. Totally naive of me, of course.

Anyway if you haven’t heard about the case, Wired has a lengthy and pretty interesting story on it from a while back. It was written before the trial and, as I remember it, paints Reiser in a somewhat sympathetic light while still remaining objective. I’ll admit its been a while since I read it though.

Hans Reiser: Once a Linux Visionary, Now Accused of Murder