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Page Contents Author Introduction Notes Prerequisites NVIDIA binary driver ATI binary driver NDISwrapper

Author

Bill Giannikos (bill2 at giannikos.com.au)
www.billgiannikos.com

Introduction

Typically Ubuntu should support suspend and hibernate just fine out of the box. However problems can appear when you start using unsupported drivers with Ubuntu. This guide will help solve some of these issues.

Notes

If you have any other tips please let me know and I will add them to this guide. Alternatively you can edit this guide yourself, it is a wiki after all.

You should save all your work before trying suspend as it may not wake up during testing.

Prerequisites

You should run a full update for your installation of Ubuntu to ensure you have all the latest packages installed.

NVIDIA binary driver

The NVIDIA binary driver is a culprit in a number of suspend issues. Try the following to see if suspend begins to work. Some of these tips will mean that your system will take longer to recover from a suspend, unfortunately there isn't much that can be done about that.

1. Update to the latest NVIDIA drivers. You can follow our Configuring a NVIDIA graphics chip for Ubuntu 7.10 guide on how to do this.

2. Add the following line to your "Device" or "Screen" section (doesn't matter which) in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file:

It doesn't matter if your card isn't actually AGP.

The end result will look something like this:

You can use your favourite editor to edit this file, with nano you would use:

Reboot before trying suspend for these changes to take effect.

3. Edit your /etc/default/acpi-support file. In this file find the "POST_VIDEO" and "SAVE_VBE_STATE" options and change these values from "true" to "false".

Reboot before trying suspend for these changes to take effect.

4. Open a terminal window and type in the following:

5. An option is just to switch from the binary "nvidia" driver to the open source "nv" driver. Of course you will lose 3D support with this.

ATI binary driver

The ATI binary driver tends to be even worse than the NVIDIA driver with suspend issues. Try the following to see if suspend begins to work. Some of these tips will mean that your system will take longer to recover from a suspend, unfortunately there isn't much that can be done about that.

1. Update to the latest ATI driver. You can follow our Configuring the fglrx driver for ATI graphics chips in Ubuntu 7.10 guide on how to do this.

2. Edit your /etc/default/acpi-support file. In this file find the "POST_VIDEO" and "SAVE_VBE_STATE" options and change these values from "true" to "false".

Reboot before trying suspend for these changes to take effect.

3. Open a terminal window and type in the following:

4. An option is just to switch from the binary "fglrx" driver to the open source "radeon" driver. Of course you will lose 3D support with this.

NDISwrapper

NDISwrapper itself works just fine with suspend, however it could be the Windows driver you use that may cause a problem. If you are having a problem with suspend try using a different Windows driver if one is available. You can also try updating to the latest version of NDISwrapper by following our Configuring the ndiswrapper driver for wireless controllers without native Linux drivers in Ubuntu 7.10 guide.