IBM ThinkPad T41 Standby Problem w/ Centrino
 

I have an IBM ThinkPad T41 + Suse Professional 9.1 and everything works nicely except for standby. I have successfully configured Intel 2200BG card using iwp2200 driver from Intel. The problems start appearing when I resume the laptop from a standby mode. The wireless connection works for about a minute and then suddenly stops. Both ifconfig and iwconfig show no signs of problems, but there is no wireless activity. Unloading the iwp2200 and loading it again works and if lucky, the card pickups an IP address but still there is no connection. Sometimes after reloading the module the laptop just hangs and I have to do a cold reboot. In other situations the card doesn't pickup IP address. The only thing that fixes the problem is a reboot, which makes a standby mode useless.

Is there any way to fix this? I bought the ThinkPad specifically to be able to standby/resume in Linux. I was also thinking of upgrading to a Cisco Aironet card. Does it have any problems with Linux? And finally, are there any wireless cards that are known to be working fine with standby?

I forgot to mention that I'm using ACPI and Suse's powersave daemon.

I have solved the problem by switching to APM. However the battery life dropped significantly. With ACPI the battery life was about 3 hrs 30 min - 4 hrs, but with APM it's only 2 hr 30 min. Can somebody recommend me a wireless card that will work with ACPI?

deathkrush -- Welcome to LQ, and thanks for posting back with the solution as that will helpful to future readers.

As for wireless card recommendations, I'd suggest taking a look at the LQ HCL Good luck with it -- J.W.

Hey,
I have a T40 and nearly everytime I put it to standby I loose the mouse (USB Mouse...)
How can I prevent that bug or how can I say to the computer never to go in standby ?
(I'm using Mandrake 10)
Thank you !

Are you using acpi or apm?

If you want to disable standby you can go to IBM BIOS and set all power management options to off. Also you can remove acpid and apmd rpm packages and disable apm and acpi in the kernel. That's not a very good idea though because you will lose a lot of battery power.

oki thanks...

Deathkrush,

If i recall correctly, you just need to add some commands to down the wireless nic, and rmmod it to your standby script.

This will prevent you from having those problems, and no need to buy a pcmcia card.

--Neekofab

I have tried all possibilities. I have tried ifdown eth1, rmmod ipw2200, /etc/init.d/network stop even switching to init 3 before standby. Whenever I use ACPI the wireless modules get broken after a standby and only a reboot fixes it. In APM after a standby/resume I am able to modprobe ipw2200 and most of the time it works. Sometimes I have to do rmmod ipw2200 and modprobe ipw2200 combinations a couple of times before the wireless card wakes up.

Problem solved! I upgraded to Suse 9.2 and ACPI works flawlessly, even better than APM. Suspend to Disk is very fast and reliable, almost as fast as in Windows XP. When you resume the machine the wireless works automatically, there is no need to run any scripts. I can even swap Ultrabay devices on the fly, without suspending the machine!