Errors encountered when performing hibernate / suspend

[Ian Smith]

On Sun, 30 May 2010, Wei Yang Tan wrote:

[trimming and reformatting around hotmail brokenness]

 > > First, thank you very much for your help. I am very new to FreeBSD, 
 > so do bear with me for a while. Anyway, the problem is as follows:

 > > Whenever I tried to hibernate, it will not be successful and I get 
 > the following error at my ~/.xession-error file:

 > > ** Message: xfsm-shutdown-helper.c:268: Using HAL to shutdown/reboot the computer.
 > > ** Message: xfsm-shutdown-helper.c:268: Using HAL to shutdown/reboot the computer.
 > > ** (xfce4-session:1124): WARNING **: xfsm-shutdown-helper.c:234: 
 > Failed to contact HAL: No back-end for your operating system

You should first try suspending from a virtual terminal screen, not from 
within X; these messages indicate that you are attempting to use some X 
tool to suspend, which only complicates things, involving HAL etc.

If by 'hibernate' you mean Suspend To Disk, that's not supported in 
FreeBSD unless your BIOS provides direct support for it - yours does 
not.  Hibernate is S4, but your 'hw.acpi.s4bios: 0' shows no support.

 > > I read the Handbook and I thought it may help by trying out the 
 > command "acpiconf -s1". Of course it is not successful and the error 
 > message ar ~/.xsession-error is:

You should try looking in /var/log/messages instead.  S1 sleep state, if 
it works, will not buy you anything noticeable.  S3 is Suspend To RAM 
(STR) and may or may not work on your machine.

Try turning on verbose ACPI messages and then try suspending to RAM:

# sysctl hw.acpi.verbose=1
# acpiconf -s3

then show us the results from /var/log/messages.  If pressing the sleep 
or power buttons (briefly) will wake the computer, you are way ahead; 
otherwise you may need to reboot, but in either case messages may help.

 > > while the following is my "dmesg" output:
 > > 
 > > Copyright (c) 1992-2009 The FreeBSD Project.
 > > Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
 > > 	The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
 > > FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
 > > FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE #0: Sat Nov 21 15:48:17 UTC 2009
 > >     root at almeida.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC
 > > Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
 > > CPU: Intel Pentium III (996.77-MHz 686-class CPU)
 > >   Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0x68a  Stepping = 10
 > >   Features=0x383fbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,MMX,FXSR,SSE>
 > > real memory  = 537395200 (512 MB)
 > > avail memory = 510431232 (486 MB)
 > > ACPI APIC Table: <COMPAQ SOLANO  >
 > > ioapic0: Changing APIC ID to 8
 > > ioapic0 <Version 2.0> irqs 0-23 on motherboard
 > > kbd1 at kbdmux0
 > > acpi0: <COMPAQ CPQ0005> on motherboard

Are you running the most recent BIOS update for this machine?  Compaq 
machines are more likely than some others to have working S3, though 
most often that only works on laptop models.

 > > acpi0: [ITHREAD]
 > > acpi0: Power Button (fixed)
 > > acpi0: reservation of 0, a0000 (3) failed
 > > acpi0: reservation of 100000, 1ff00000 (3) failed
 > > Timecounter "ACPI-safe" frequency 3579545 Hz quality 850
 > > acpi_timer0: <24-bit timer at 3.579545MHz> port 0xf808-0xf80b on acpi0
[..]
 > > acpi_button0: <Power Button> on acpi0
[..]
 > > cpu0: <ACPI CPU> on acpi0
 > > acpi_throttle0: <ACPI CPU Throttling> on cpu0
[..]
 > > acpi0: AcpiEnterSleepState failed - AE_BAD_ADDRESS
 > > wakeup from sleeping state (slept 00:00:03)

I assume this is a desktop machine, as it showss no 'Sleep' button. 
Those last two messages should also appear in your /var/log/messages.

 > > The output of "sysctl hw.acpi":
 > > 
 > > 
 > > hw.acpi.supported_sleep_state: S1 S3 S4 S5
 > > hw.acpi.power_button_state: S5
 > > hw.acpi.sleep_button_state: S1
 > > hw.acpi.lid_switch_state: NONE
 > > hw.acpi.standby_state: S1
 > > hw.acpi.suspend_state: S3
 > > hw.acpi.sleep_delay: 1
 > > hw.acpi.s4bios: 0
 > > hw.acpi.verbose: 0
 > > hw.acpi.disable_on_reboot: 0
 > > hw.acpi.handle_reboot: 0
 > > hw.acpi.reset_video: 0
 > > hw.acpi.cpu.cx_lowest: C1

 > > I am using FreeBSD 8.0 and Xfce desktop environment (Thunar is the 
 > file manager). For hardware, I am using Pentium III; Compaq Deskpro 
 > EN.

Ok, it's a desktop; even Suspend To RAM (S3) will only work if the BIOS 
and motherboard support maintaining memory contents while it's asleep.

 > > I am not sure if all these information are sufficient; do let me 
 > know if you need more information. Once again, thank you very much 
 > for your help.

 > Hi! Erm... just wondering, is my debug info sufficient or is the 
 > problem not an ACPI one? Also, may I know what can I do to help in 
 > solving the problem?

S4 (hibernate or Suspend To Disk) will not work on this machine.  If S3 
(STR) will not work on it you may be out of luck, but give it a try.

cheers, Ian