[ale] Linux swap space vs hibernate, power shutdown settings

Ron Frazier atllinuxenthinfo at c3energy.com
Tue Nov 8 14:46:18 EST 2011


Hi Scott,

Nope. No mounted USB drives while trying to hibernate. The keyboard, 
mouse, and the UPS are attached by USB, but no drives.

Ron

On 11/08/2011 02:30 PM, Scott Castaline wrote:
> On 11/08/2011 10:59 AM, Ron Frazier wrote:
>    
>> David,
>>
>> I've done some testing and gotten some, shall we say, interesting results.
>>
>> The specs for my machine are: AMD Phenom II X4 quad core CPU, 8 GB RAM,
>> Ubuntu 10.04.
>>
>> I booted a live CD of Ubuntu 11.04 (different from my installed system
>> but power drain about the same) and pulled the plug on the AC input to
>> the UPS. Everything was at the default settings for the CD, and no
>> applications were running. The drain on the battery was 247 W.
>>
>> The good news is that the battery lasted 9 min 45 sec, a bit longer than
>> I thought it would. The bad news is that the battery charge went from
>> about 30% to about 0%, according to Ubuntu, in just a few seconds. The
>> machine shut down very abruptly, and I don't think it had time to do a
>> shutdown sequence. That's why I was booting from a CD. I'm probably
>> going to use the gconf-editor to set the shutdown point at 70% of full
>> charge in my normal system.
>>
>> I timed a shutdown sequence with my email and Firefox running. There
>> were 5 FF windows and they had 7, 2, 6, 6, 6 tabs open respectively. A
>> 16 GB swap file was available but none was in use prior to shutdown
>> according to System Monitor. There were no unsaved files open which
>> might delay a shutdown by asking questions about saving them. (What
>> would happen if they were open?)
>>
>> The shutdown sequence took 9 seconds to complete, very impressive.
>>
>> I then tried to do a hibernate. That didn't turn out so well. The system
>> spent 30 seconds trying to hibernate, produced some error messages on
>> the text screen, then restarted and went back to the login screen on the
>> screen saver after about 1 minute. So, it never hibernated at all. For
>> now, I have it set to shut down on low battery. I still need to tinker
>> with the levels where it shuts down though, as it's probably defaulting
>> to 10% charge.
>>
>> I posted a picture of the error screen which I took with my cellphone.
>> If anyone knows what this means, please let me know. It's posted here:
>>
>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9879631/hibernate%20error.jpg
>>      
> Any forgotten mounted USB hard drives?
>    
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>
>> On 11/05/2011 09:43 PM, David Tomaschik wrote:
>>      
>>> Time how long your system takes to shut down and how long it takes to
>>> hibernate.  Make sure you do both with the same apps loaded, etc.  I'd
>>> be interested to see any hard data.
>>>
>>> David
>>>
>>>        

-- 

(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new messages very quickly.)

Ron Frazier

770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
linuxdude AT c3energy.com



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