New Linux User

HOWTO: Enable Suspend with Xandros.

by Jon on March 7th, 2006

As promised, here’s my first entry on Xandros.

Xandros does not come with suspend enabled out of the box (at least not in the Online Community Edition that I tried). However, if you’re willing to put up with some clunkiness, you can get suspend working with little fuss.

Here’s a link to a Xandros forum post that contains more information on what I’m posting here.

Using Xandros Network (the proprietary Xandros file repository), download the hibernate script. I also downloaded the xandros-hibernate script, but I didn’t touch it after downloading it and therefore I’m not sure if it’s required.

As root, run the command hibernate. It’s likely that you’ll get an error something like:

add option resume2=swap:/dev/hdb1 to lilo.conf first

I added this line manually to my lilo.conf as the instructions state, but the instructions in the forum are to add it to the /etc/devices/cmdappend.inf file. Try that first and if it doesn’t work, add the resume option to the end of the Xandros boot line in /etc/lilo.conf.

You need to update Lilo now. I suspect you can simply run lilo, but I rebooted. Twice. Evidently, the first reboot updates Lilo and the second activates the resume function. I found that my suspend worked ater the first reboot so I don’t know why the author recommends two reboots.

Now that everything is installed and configured, to hibernate your machine simply open a terminal window and, as root, type hibernate. Your machine should power down with an incredibly ugly ‘Hibernating’ screen (holy after thought Batman!). Press your power button to power it back up and select the normal Xandros boot option. Sit back and watch the only uglier screen on the planet - the ‘Waking up…’ screen. Ewww…

Now for the clunkiness. I wasn’t able to get Klaptop’s hibernate function to work. Every time I shut my laptop, it would just lock up. This leads me to believe that Klaptop doesn’t call the hibernate script, which is what I would have expected from a file named xandros-hibernate. I guess it’s not as customized as I thought.

The only way I could get my laptop to hibernate is to actually open up a root terminal window and type hibernate. I eventually used sudo in a script file to call hibernate for me and created a desktop icon for it. I’d rather just close the lid and walk away, but the best I could do is create that icon and click it to hibernate.

Resuming was an even bigger headache. My laptop would resume just fine, but my PCMCIA card would lose its IP address. I played around with some device settings in the hibernate script, but to no avail. Again, I eventually created a script using sudo to bring the card up and request an IP from my router. So now I have to click an icon to hibernate the machine and click another one to bring my networking back up after resume. Not ideal, but usable.

One of the major selling points of GNU/Linux for me is my ability to bring my laptop wherever I want and just start using it. People always ask ‘is THAT Linux?” They think Linux is this black command line thing that only wizards can use. I’ve sold more than a few people on at least trying Linux this way, however having to click icons to suspend and resume from hibernate is exactly the type of thing that will turn people away from it. They just want it work, and Xandros only comes half way when it comes to suspend.

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