Hibernation woes

[Derek Broughton]

Pastor JW wrote:

> I have been following this thread for awhile and trying out the
> instuctions on
> my laptop.  After clicking the hibernate icon, it does give a readout of
> some kind.  Mine goes so fast I can't read it but it says something to the
> effect
> it can't find swap.  But it goes ahead and hibernates, ...I think! If
> swap is needed perhaps what I think is hibernation is something else,
> although to get there I click the hibernate icon, like I said.

I'm not sure quite what's happening - but if it didn't hibernate, it
shouldn't turn off, and if it can't find a swap partition, it can't
hibernate, but see below.

>> derek at bella:~$ free
>> total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
>> Mem:       1025972     934844      91128          0         52     311512
>> -/+ buffers/cache:     623280     402692
>> Swap:      3004112      30280    2973832
>>
>> If the number in the "used" column for Mem is GREATER than the number in
>> the "free" column for Swap, you need a bigger swap partition [and before
>> someone says how untrue that is, I know, it's just an approximation].
> 
> For info, here is mine:
> 
> dell-desktop:~$ free
>              total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> Mem:       2066040     494400    1571640          0       1588     136804
> -/+ buffers/cache:     356008    1710032
> Swap:            0          0          0
> 
> So if hibernation needs swap, what is my laptop doing?  It goes to a blank
> screen and to get back on, a pop-up come to request my password then it is
> just as it was before with all my open apps in place.

So it didn't shut down?  Hibernate goes right to power-off.  What seems to
have happened here is: it started to hibernate; turned on the screensaver
password; failed to hibernate; resumed - at which point you now have to
respond to the screensaver password (this is intentional so that somebody
else resuming your hibernated system would always need to provide a
password).

You could try "sudo swapon -a" to see if that finds a swap partition at all,
otherwise you'll need to create one.

btw, I love your XFace icon :-)
-- 
derek