pm-action(8)

NAME

pm-action - Suspend or Hibernate your computer

SYNOPSIS

pm-hibernate [--help]
pm-suspend [--quirk-*--help]
pm-suspend-hybrid [--quirk-*--help]

DESCRIPTION

This manual page documents briefly the pm-action, pm-hibernate, pm-suspend and pm-suspend-hybrid commands. This manual page was originally written for the Debian(TM) distribution and has been adopted by the pm-utils project.

These commands can be used to put the machine in a sleep state. The
precise way how this is done can be influenced by installing
executables and configuration snippets. For some options external
programs are needed.

These commands will usually be called by hald when triggered to do so by a program in a desktop session such as gnome-power-manager. Calling them from the command line is also possible, but it is not guaranteed
that all programs in your desktop session keep working as expected.

pm-suspend

During suspend most devices are shutdown, and system state is saved in RAM. The system still requires power in this state. Most modern systems require 3 to 5 seconds to enter and leave suspend, and most laptops can stay in suspend mode for 1 to 3 days before exhausting their battery.

pm-hibernate

During hibernate the system is fully powered off, and system state is saved to disk. The system does not require power, and can stay
in hibernate mode indefinitely. Most modern systems require 15 to
45 seconds to enter and leave hibernate, and entering and leaving
hibernate takes longer when you have more memory.

pm-suspend-hybrid

Hybrid-suspend is the process where the system does everything it
needs to hibernate, suspends instead of shutting down. This means
that your computer can wake up quicker than for normal hibernation if you do not run out of power, and you can resume even if you run out of power. s2both(8) is an hybrid-suspend implementation.

OPTIONS

Om most hardware putting the video card in the suspend state and
recovering from it needs some special quirk handling. With the
--quirk-* options of the pm-suspend and pm-suspend-hybrid commands you can select which quirks should be used.

--quirk-dpms-on

This option forces the video hardware to turn on the screen during resume. Most video adapters turn on the screen themselves, but if
you get a blank screen on resume that can be turned back on by
moving the mouse or typing then this option may be useful.

--quirk-dpms-suspend

This option forces the video hardware to turn off the screen when
suspending. Most video adapters seem to do this correctly, but some do not, which wastes lits of power. If your screen is still on
after successfully suspending you may need to use this option.

--quirk-radeon-off

This option forces Radeon hardware to turn off the display during
suspend and turn it back on during resume. You only need to do this on some old ThinkPads of the ´30 series (T30, X31, R32,... ) with
Radeon video hardware.

--quirk-s3-bios

This option calls the video BIOS during S3 resume. Unfortunately,
it is not always allowed to call the video BIOS at this point, so
sometimes adding this option can actually break resume on some
systems.

--quirk-s3-mode

This option initializes the video card into a VGA text mode, and
then uses the BIOS to set the video mode. On some systems S3 BIOS
only initializes the video bios to text mode, and so both S3 BIOS
and S3 MODE are needed.

--quirk-vbe-post

This option will attempt to reinitialize the video card when
resuming from suspend, using the same code the system BIOS uses at boot in order to initialize the video hardware. Not all video cards need this, and using this option on systems where it is not needed can cause a system to lock up when resuming.

--quirk-vbemode-restore

This option will save and restore the current VESA mode which may
be necessary to avoid X screen corruption. Using this feature on
Intel graphics hardware is probably a bad idea.

--quirk-vbestate-restore

This option saves and restores some low level hardware state which may be invalid after suspend.

--quirk-vga-mode3

This option will try to force the video card into a standard text
mode on resume.

--quirk-save-pci

Save the PCI config space for the VGA card.

FILES

/etc/pm/config.d

The files in this directory are evaluated in C sort order. These
files can be provided by individual packages outside of pm-utils.
If a global configuration variable is set, the value set to will be appended to the previous value. If any other variable is set, it
will be ignored. The syntax is simply: VAR_NAME = value. See the
CONFIGURATION VARIABLES section for valid variables defined by
pm-utils. External packages can define others, see their respective documentation for more information.

/etc/pm/sleep.d, /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d

Programs in these directories (we call them hooks) are combined and executed in C sort order before suspend and hibernate with as
argument ´suspend´ or ´hibernate´. Afterwards they are called in
reverse order with argument ´resume´ and ´thaw´ respectively. If
both directories contain a similar named file, the one in
/etc/pm/sleep.d will get preference. It is possible to disable a
hook in the distribution directory by putting a non-executable file in /etc/pm/sleep.d, or by adding it to the HOOK_BLACKLIST
configuration variable.

/var/log/pm-suspend.log

The log file shows what was done on the last suspend/hibernate and resume/thaw.

CONFIGURATION VARIABLES

Configuration variables defined by pm-utils. These can be set in any
file in /etc/pm/config.d

SLEEP_MODULE [=kernel]

The default suspend backend to use. Valid values are:

kernel

The built-in kernel suspend/resume support. Use this if nothing else is supported on your system.

uswsusp

If your system has support for the userspace suspend programs
(s2ram/s2disk/s2both), then use this.

tuxonice

If your system has support for tuxonice/suspend2, use this.

HIBERNATE_RESUME_POST_VIDEO [=no]

If video should be posted after hibernate, just like after suspend. You should not normally need to set this.

SUSPEND_MODULES

Space separated list of modules to unload before suspend.

HOOK_BLACKLIST

Space separated list of hooks that should be disabled.

HIBERNATE_MODE

Default method to power down the system when hibernating. If not
set, the system will use the kernel default as a default value.
Check /sys/power/disk for valid values. The default value will be
surrounded by [square brackets].

BUGS

The upstream BTS can be found at https://bugs.freedesktop.org/. Select ´pm-utils´ as product.

SEE ALSO

s2ram(8), s2disk(8), s2both(8), pm-is-supported(1), pm-powersave(8), vbetool(8), radeontool(8)

AUTHOR

Tim Dijkstra <tim@famdijkstra.org>

Manpage author.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2007 Tim Dijkstra

This manual page was originally written for the Debian(TM) system, and has been adopted by the pm-utils project.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2 or (at
your option) any later version published by the Free Software
Foundation.

pm-action Apr 25, 2007 PM-ACTION(8)