1 Debugging suspend and resume
2 (C) 2007 Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@sisk.pl>, GPL
4 1. Testing suspend to disk (STD)
6 To verify that the STD works, you can try to suspend in the "reboot" mode:
8 # echo reboot > /sys/power/disk
9 # echo disk > /sys/power/state
11 and the system should suspend, reboot, resume and get back to the command prompt
12 where you have started the transition. If that happens, the STD is most likely
13 to work correctly, but you need to repeat the test at least a couple of times in
14 a row for confidence. This is necessary, because some problems only show up on
15 a second attempt at suspending and resuming the system. You should also test
16 the "platform" and "shutdown" modes of suspend:
18 # echo platform > /sys/power/disk
19 # echo disk > /sys/power/state
23 # echo shutdown > /sys/power/disk
24 # echo disk > /sys/power/state
26 in which cases you will have to press the power button to make the system
27 resume. If that does not work, you will need to identify what goes wrong.
31 To verify if there are any drivers that cause problems you can run the STD
34 # echo test > /sys/power/disk
35 # echo disk > /sys/power/state
37 in which case the system should freeze tasks, suspend devices, disable nonboot
38 CPUs (if any), wait for 5 seconds, enable nonboot CPUs, resume devices, thaw
39 tasks and return to your command prompt. If that fails, most likely there is
40 a driver that fails to either suspend or resume (in the latter case the system
41 may hang or be unstable after the test, so please take that into consideration).
42 To find this driver, you can carry out a binary search according to the rules:
43 - if the test fails, unload a half of the drivers currently loaded and repeat
44 (that would probably involve rebooting the system, so always note what drivers
45 have been loaded before the test),
46 - if the test succeeds, load a half of the drivers you have unloaded most
49 Once you have found the failing driver (there can be more than just one of
50 them), you have to unload it every time before the STD transition. In that case
51 please make sure to report the problem with the driver.
53 It is also possible that a cycle can still fail after you have unloaded
54 all modules. In that case, you would want to look in your kernel configuration
55 for the drivers that can be compiled as modules (testing again with them as
56 modules), and possibly also try boot time options such as "noapic" or "noacpi".
58 b) Testing minimal configuration
60 If the test mode of STD works, you can boot the system with "init=/bin/bash"
61 and attempt to suspend in the "reboot", "shutdown" and "platform" modes. If
62 that does not work, there probably is a problem with a driver statically
63 compiled into the kernel and you can try to compile more drivers as modules,
64 so that they can be tested individually. Otherwise, there is a problem with a
65 modular driver and you can find it by loading a half of the modules you normally
66 use and binary searching in accordance with the algorithm:
67 - if there are n modules loaded and the attempt to suspend and resume fails,
68 unload n/2 of the modules and try again (that would probably involve rebooting
70 - if there are n modules loaded and the attempt to suspend and resume succeeds,
71 load n/2 modules more and try again.
73 Again, if you find the offending module(s), it(they) must be unloaded every time
74 before the STD transition, and please report the problem with it(them).
78 In case the STD does not work on your system even in the minimal configuration
79 and compiling more drivers as modules is not practical or some modules cannot
80 be unloaded, you can use one of the more advanced debugging techniques to find
81 the problem. First, if there is a serial port in your box, you can set the
82 CONFIG_DISABLE_CONSOLE_SUSPEND kernel configuration option and try to log kernel
83 messages using the serial console. This may provide you with some information
84 about the reasons of the suspend (resume) failure. Alternatively, it may be
85 possible to use a FireWire port for debugging with firescope
86 (ftp://ftp.firstfloor.org/pub/ak/firescope/). On i386 it is also possible to
87 use the PM_TRACE mechanism documented in Documentation/s2ram.txt .
89 2. Testing suspend to RAM (STR)
91 To verify that the STR works, it is generally more convenient to use the s2ram
92 tool available from http://suspend.sf.net and documented at
93 http://en.opensuse.org/s2ram . However, before doing that it is recommended to
94 carry out the procedure described in section 1.
96 Assume you have resolved the problems with the STD and you have found some
97 failing drivers. These drivers are also likely to fail during the STR or
98 during the resume, so it is better to unload them every time before the STR
99 transition. Now, you can follow the instructions at
100 http://en.opensuse.org/s2ram to test the system, but if it does not work
101 "out of the box", you may need to boot it with "init=/bin/bash" and test
102 s2ram in the minimal configuration. In that case, you may be able to search
103 for failing drivers by following the procedure analogous to the one described in
104 1b). If you find some failing drivers, you will have to unload them every time
105 before the STR transition (ie. before you run s2ram), and please report the