Getting Software Suspend 2 to work
 

Ok, so I downloaded the patch for kernel 2.6.8 I believe it patch software-suspend-2.0.0.105-for-2.6.8.1. I applied it using the command
in the kernel sources directory. I recompiled the kernel, and installed it. But when I run
I get some error, and the computer does not hibernate. thoughts? I'll have to get the error. Something about /proc/sys/<something here> not existing I think.

*posting your error here could help*

here's the error, sorry about the delay

Ok... the hibernate script change often, nearly as often as the software-suspend patch. Make sure you have the "old" script installed, the one relative to the 2.6.8.1 kernel patch. Your hibernate script is probably too recent or too old, depending, it is probably looking for something that doesn't exist in your software-suspend version.

ok, I installed the debian package hibernate. I know I have a kernel that is 2.6.8, but I don't know if it's 2.6.8.1, will that make a huge difference? Where do I get the hibernate source?

I don't know about the exact version of the kernel, I suppose you will have to try :)

You can find hibernate at http://www.suspend2.net/

You might check to see if you have a swap partition - separate from your root partition - that is at least as large as your memory.

which version of hibernate should I use? theres anywhere from 0.95.1 to 1.10. Thoughts?

nobody knows what version of hibernate I need to download? Thoughts?

Is /proc mounted? I looked on one of my boxes (running 2.6.8-2-sparc64-smp) and it's there for me.

yes /proc is mounted. Why does that affect which version of hibernate I need to download? I was told I need to download a certain version because I have a 2.6.8 kernel

It doesn't affect it, but the errors you're getting make it seem like it's not mounted. I'm using hibernate 1.10-1 from unstable with kernel 2.6.9 and it works fine.

hmmmm....I'll hvae to check and make certain that /proc is mounted, but I'm pretty sure it is. Other thoughts? Should the most recent version of hibernate support all old patches?

I'm not quite sure... maybe but it's hard to tell.
My guess would be to upgrade to the latest kernel wih the latest software suspend2 patch as well, so you will be sure it is fine.

is it possible that the version of hibernate in Sarge is too old for the version of the patch I applied?

that's what I think. Again, my guess is to try various version of hibernate from swsusp2 website... it's hard to tell which version should work with which version of the patch. There might be some mention in the readme file, thought.

would using the debian kernel-patch package work w/ their version of hibernate?

If you're talking about kernel-patch-suspend2, it's only available in experimental right now.

I thinks it's in sarge as well, at least, I thought so

nope your right, it that etch? or sid? etch is testing right?

Not according to packages.debian.org. It shows up in the list for me in sid because some other package references it but it's not installable.

Generally you should grab the newest version of the hibernate script and suspend2 patch from suspend2.net, grab the kernel it was created against and use those.

ok, I'll have to wait until I get internet(high-speed) acess. Can I do make-kpkg on so called 'pristine' kernel sources? do I need to apply any debian patches?

make-kpkg will work on any kernel source.

k, thanks. If there are any other thoughts that'd be great, other wise...I guess this is it

I've never seen your particular problem, infact the only part of the hibernate script that references /proc/sys/kernel/osrelease is /usr/share/hibernate/scriptlets.d/modules. AFAIK everything you should need to get things working is on wiki.suspend2.net

Hibernation in the form of swsusp or suspend2 can be a real pain to get working sometimes, the infrastructure for power management is pretty new in the kernel so not all drivers place nice and it can take a good amount of work to track down what's broken. It's the reason I'm still using 2.6.9, anything newer and the box hangs on resume.

I'd download several different suspend script versions and try them one after another. Or you could google (www.google.com/linux) with the error message, if you have not already done that.

Or you could just stop by the suspend2 IRC channel and talk to the developers. The only annoying thing is that Nigel lives in Australia, so it can be hard to get ahold of him sometimes.

I have the same problem. I use kernel 2.6.12.5, software suspend 2.1.9.9 for 2.6.12 and hibernate script 1.10-1.

By doing "hibernate -v4" (verbosity) I find that it seems as

+ echo Unloading blacklisted modules listed /etc/hibernate/blacklisted-modules
Unloading blacklisted modules listed /etc/hibernate/blacklisted-modules

---snip---

+ FindModuleDeps nvidia
+ Get26ModulesFile
+ grep -q ^2\.4\. /proc/sys/kernel/osrelease
grep: /proc/sys/kernel/osrelease: No such file or directory
+ cat /proc/modules

and the same happens for:
FindModuleDeps acx100
FindModuleDeps acx_pci
FindModuleDeps prism54

All modules I don't have, but are blacklisted in /etc/hibernate/blacklisted-modules

The module "usbhid" causes the same problem, and this is a module I do have, and need.

I don't have a directory called /proc/sys, maybe I should (I will have to look at my kernel configurations obviously). But just wanted to know there are other ones with the same problem.

SOLVED
 

And this solved the problem:
I enabled
General setup --->[*] Sysctl support
in the kernel. This gave ma a /proc/sys and within that all I needed. Now suspending works fine.

Why would you remove that in the first place?

ok, it was the Sysctl that was the problem. I had removed it from my kernel because I didn't know what it did. Once I added this it went into hibernate mode, but then it hung. Here's where it hangs

Which is why you should start with a known-good config, especially if you don't understand what the options in the kernel mean. Hell in this case the help text for the option states that it will populate the /proc/sys tree if you have procfs support enabled and to only disable it if you have a very good reason.

Read the hibernate.log file or possibly dmesg, one of them should mention which process refused to freeze. I had it freeze at that point one time myself, attempting to hibernate a second time worked fine. I assume that the sync took too long and caused suspend2 to abort, since there was less work to do the second time it completed just fine.

..by accident, but not it's fixed.

here's the stuff from hibernate.log, there was nothing in dmesg