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Suspend2 Suspended 77

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the be-careful-of-burnout dept.
musicon writes "Nigel Cunningham, the creator of the Suspend2 software suspend system for Linux announced his retirement from the project in a message to the Linux Kenel Mailing List. 'Users of Suspend2 can rest assured that I will not allow the patches to suffer bitrot. I will be continuing to use them myself, and will therefore have the best of incentives to keep them up-to-date [...] I won't, however, be making any sort of concerted effort at getting them merged into the vanilla kernel [...] I don't see the point to doing anything but maintaining the patches as they stand.'"
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Suspend2 Suspended More

Suspend2 Suspended

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  • for the lazy.... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @04:51AM (#14873324)
    Hi all.

    I'm delighted to announce that I've accepted a call to serve a congregation in
    Victoria, Australia, as a Home Missionary elder. As a result, some time in
    the next month or two, I will stop working for Cyclades and make the move.

    Users of Suspend2 can rest assured that I will not allow the patches to suffer
    bitrot. I will be continuing to use them myself, and will therefore have the
    best of incentives to keep them up-to-date.

    Now for the downside: I won't, however, be making any sort of concerted effort
    at getting them merged into the vanilla kernel after my move, and am not
    inclined to make a big effort beforehand. Recent discussions on LKML clearly
    showed that Pavel doesn't want to see them merged, and I didn't see much in
    the way of other kernel developers expressing a desire contrary to Pavel's
    wishes. I don't want to waste my time and effort, so I don't see the point to
    doing anything but maintaining the patches as they stand.

    I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Cyclades for their employment and
    support of the project.

    Regards,

    Nigel
    • I've accepted a call to serve a congregation in Victoria, Australia, as a Home Missionary elder.

      Oh yeah, like none of us have ever used that lame old excuse.

      -Eric

  • Of all the useful things...

    Is there an alternative to it that might actually be part of the kernel eventually and not a maintained patchset?

    • Re:Awww!!! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gerddie ( 173963 )
      There is a suspend as part of the vanilla kernel. I'm using it for quite some time now. Hibernate works on my Laptop, but only if I don't use the binary only nvidia drivers (Geforce2 Go) - and it works on my desktop system too - here even with the nvidia drivers (Geforce 6600) and SMP/Hyperthreading enabled (needs CPU hotplug enabled too). I'm using the hibernate scripts ( (apt-get install | emerge) hibernate) and the /sys/power/state method. Suspend to RAM is not working on my desktop system though.

  • Home Missionary elder? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MichaelSmith ( 789609 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @05:07AM (#14873357) Homepage Journal

    According to TFA he is going to be some sort of Home Missionary elder. He seems to be about 200 years too late. All the missionaries left years ago. At least I thought so...hope so.

    Now I don't want to be rude but what we really do need here in Victoria, Australia is good software engineers and I can think right now of a spot for him a couple of cubes across from me where his knowledge of linux kernel internals could be put to good use.

    • Re:Home Missionary elder? (Score:4, Informative)

      by smvp6459 ( 896580 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @05:43AM (#14873462)
      I think he's talking LDS AKA Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints AKA Mormon
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Jesus_Chris t_of_Latter-day_Saints [wikipedia.org] )

      They're about the only people I know that use the words home, missionary, and elder in the same sentence. I currently reside in Salt Lake City, Utah, or as I like to call it, the mothership of the LDS church; as such I get to witness this "culture". It's unlikely these missionaries will ever leave Australia unless A. Your goverment passes laws prohibiting their presence (China) or B. Numbers of them start getting killed (certain parts of the U.S.). And something tells me the First Presidency would disagree with your religion vs. technology assesment.

      • I think he's talking LDS AKA Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints AKA Mormon. They're about the only people I know that use the words home, missionary, and elder in the same sentence.

        I'm Mormon, and was a missionary, and the LDS Church has no such thing as "Home Missionary elder". We have full-time missionaries, both young (ages 19-25 or so) and old (retired couples), and Home Teachers, who visit members of the Church in their own areas, and various Ward Missionaries and Stake Missionaries, who

        • Thanks for posting that. I was going to but you beat me too it. Yea I doubt it also but then there are a lot more Linux hackers out there that are Mormon than a most people on Slashdot know. After all Novell is out of Utah and BTU TV actually gives instructions on using Linux to view it's streams.
          Funny how someone that lives in Salt Lake City and claims to know so much about the LDS church could get it so wrong.

          What really BUGS the daylights out of me is why do people think they have the right to say he sho
          • I mean for good freaking grief for all we know he will be working in a drug rehab program or a food kitchen!

            That's all fine and dandy until you hit a die-hard darwinist such as myself who thinks drug addicts should deal with their own goddamned problems. I did, and I have no pity for the weak. If you don't have the brains nor willpower to get out of your own hell, then you're better off as compost to fertilize my lawn.

            Hope is humankind's greatest blunder.
            • Actually you don't understand Evolution all that well then. Charity is a survival tactic that seems to work pretty well. Since every organism is likely to face a time of helplessness mutual cooperation can give a species an advantage. Refusing to help can put an individual at a grave disadvantage since they my be seen as less worthy as a breeding partner or will not be offered help when they or even their offspring need it.
              • Refusing to help can put an individual at a grave disadvantage since they my be seen as less worthy as a breeding partner

                Whoa there Morpheus! breeding partner ? This isn't the discovery channel, and if being a hardass means I can have a drink without gold diggers littering my personal space then I'm even happier!

                I see people as investments on a holistic scale. If you put time, effort, money (which really are all the same) into someone that's not likely to pay it back (or forward), then it's a poor invest
                • From an purely Darwinist point of view there is a single metric of success. How many of your offspring survive and have offspring. Money means nothing. Power means nothing. Fame means nothing. Only children count.
                  If your gold diggers do not carry your children to term and or do not raise them so that they are attractive to other as mates you are a failure. It is that simple.
                  That is a truly darwinist view.
        • Well, persistance can be seen as pushy. And, ye Gods, are you Mormons persistent. When I lived in Santa Clara, at least 3 groups of 2 or 3 boys (always boys) per year would come cold calling upon my door. It gets tiring after a while, you know? I'd complain, but moving was easier. Thankfully, you guys haven't managed to find my new place yet.

          • Well, persistance can be seen as pushy. And, ye Gods, are you Mormons persistent.

            Well, sure. At least up until the point that you say you're not interested and close the door. Of course, the next set of missionaries assigned to your area won't have any idea that the previous set talked to you, and probably wouldn't do anything different even if they did. After all, you might have changed your mind. Missionaries work about 12 hours per day, 6.5 days per week and they have a specific area to work in.

            • Well, sure. At least up until the point that you say you're not interested and close the door. Of course, the next set of missionaries assigned to your area won't have any idea that the previous set talked to you, and probably wouldn't do anything different even if they did. After all, you might have changed your mind. Missionaries work about 12 hours per day, 6.5 days per week and they have a specific area to work in. Knocking on doors is pretty much an activity of last resort for them, when they don't hav

        • See his family history page here:
          http://willden.org/Histories/histories.html [willden.org]

          All Mormon missionaries are Elders (except for rare female missionaries). Ward and Stake Missionaries are often referred to as Home Missionaries. So calling himself a "home missionary elder" isn't incorrect.

          The phrase "Home Missionary" has broader meaning within Christendom, particularly in Restorationist sects (Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism, Jehovah's Witness, Church of Christ, and many others that came out of the Restorationi

          • See his family history page here: http://willden.org/Histories/histories.html [willden.org]

            Those are *my* family histories, not Nigel Cunningham's. :-) Bleah... I *really* need to fix those pages...

            Ward and Stake Missionaries are often referred to as Home Missionaries. So calling himself a "home missionary elder" isn't incorrect.

            I've never heard ward and stake missionaries referred to as home missionaries. I suppose it's possible, though. However, ward and stake missionaries do not change jobs or relocate to

      • Definitely not a Mormon :). No, I'm a member of the Christian Reformed Churches of Australia. I'm not sure where the term came from, but it's essentially a pastor, but without the requirement that the man who fills the position be able to be ordained in our denomination, and it's for congregations that aren't big enough to have their own minister. HTH.
      • I currently reside in Salt Lake City, Utah, or as I like to call it, the mothership of the LDS church

        When I lived there, we called it "Living behind the Zion curtain"...

        And when ZCMI [wikipedia.org] still existed, we called it Zion's Collection of Mormon Idiots.

        Go ahead /.'ers. Flame away. Mod me down. Only someone who lived in Salt Lake City in the mid-80s would get the in-jokes anyway.
    • Now I don't want to be rude but what we really do need here in Victoria, Australia is good software engineers and I can think right now of a spot for him a couple of cubes across from me where his knowledge of linux kernel internals could be put to good use.

      Definitely. The only religious kids around in this part of the world (I live in Geelong, Vic, Aus) these days are those whose parents make them, other that, its either slightly-"I believe in a superior being but will never read the bible" religious or at

  • Tragedy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by d99-sbr ( 568719 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @05:37AM (#14873444) Journal
    This is something that the Linux kernel badly needs! Presently, suspend and hibernation is at least 5 years behind OS X and Windows.

    It takes almost two minutes to hibernate my Thinkpad with 512 MB RAM when running Ubuntu, while Windows takes about 15 seconds. Additionally, it does crash every now and then.

    • Wierd, I can suspend my thinkpad T43 in about 30 seconds.
    • for linux users maybe, but we all should be happy for him that he gets to do thing he likes.

    • Re:Tragedy (Score:3, Interesting)

      by myspys ( 204685 )
      suspend and hibernation is at least 5 years behind OS X and Windows

      I know hibernation exists in Windows, but OS X?

      Can you please enlighten me, since I've totally missed this feature in OS X :-/

      I hope you're not talking about Safe Sleep [andrewescobar.com], which is only available in the newer Powerbooks and is not the same thing as hibernation (well, it works the same, but only works on the Powerbooks, where as hibernate works on any Windows PC)
      • I think there are some hacks that allow use of Safe Sleep on supposedly unsupported Macs. It doesn't work on everything but there are certainly other Macs that can use Safe Sleep.

      • Re:Tragedy (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        My Mac Mini can safe sleep fine [andrewescobar.com], and it was a lot less hassle to set up than suspend2 under Linux.

        SuspendNow [altervista.org] software is useful too, so you can hibernate on demand.

    • It's not that bad!

      i'm running standard ACPI suspend on a Fujitsu-Siemens S7010 laptop, and suspend at least twice each day (on the way to work and on the way home). Now, despite this:

      bb@pepper:~$ uptime
      12:43:07 up 18 days, 22:02, 5 users, load average: 0.32, 0.39, 0.32
      bb@pepper:~$ uname -a
      Linux pepper 2.6.15 #3 PREEMPT Fri Jan 27 11:25:50 CET 2006 i686 GNU/Linux

      And this is with USB, Wireless, audio, 3D graphics and a multitude of other modules and features, so I consider it to be pretty impressive

      • Re:Tragedy (Score:3, Interesting)

        by brunes69 ( 86786 )
        Hibernate is suspend to disk.

        In Windows there is little reason to use suspend to ram, because suspend to disk is so damn fast (10 seconds down, 15-20 seconds up), and while suspended the laptop uses *0* power.

        Like the parent said - suspend to disk in Linux is not in a good state right now. When it *does* work, it does so very slowly. When it *doesn't* work, it's a disaster and sometimes leaves your system in such a weird state you need to hard reboot and fsck your drives.

        And don't even think about using it
        • Odd. I must be very lucky because I have a kernel with suspend2 on my laptop and using the hibernate script it seems to hibernate even faster in Linux than in Windows or at least about the same (both are usually 10 seconds). Unforunately, in Linux I have to disable hardware acceleration on fglrx (icky ATI drivers) for hibernate to work. On the other hand, I cannot get it to resume from sleep (suspend to RAM) at all.

    • I know the feeling, sometimes my Windows crashes too every now and then when I try to hibernate...

      Oh, wait...

    • Re:Tragedy (Score:3, Insightful)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
      You have the source. Grab a copy and get to work. That is the point of the GPL. It is only tragic if you don't want it enough to work on it or pay someone to work on it.
      • It always annoys me when I see posts like this. "Duh! If you don't like it, code it yourself!" It takes a great deal of skill and knowledge to code *any* piece of software. Coding something like a suspend/resume function is doubly so because you have to worry about all sorts of other stuff like hardware implementation screw-ups. Most people do NOT have the time to do something like this. Similarly, it costs *money* to do that kind of development. Like many thousands of dollars. This isn't some stupid
        • "It works in Windows. Why doesn't it work in Linux? Comments like this are nothing more than blaming the victim. "
          1. It doesn't work all that well in Windows. My IBM Thinkpad has failed to come out of hibernation more than once.
          2. What victim? No one makes you use Linux it is a choice. It isn't like Windows where you almost have to buy it if you want a ""Why doesn't it work yet?" is a perfectly reasonable question for a common user to ask." Yep and the answer is that it isn't important enough to enough peop
    • Linux has full support for suspending and hibernating; the problem isn't with Linux, the problem is with buggy ACPI implementations on laptops: most implementations simply don't conform to the ACPI specifications. They seem to have been created by hardware vendors fiddling with the implementation until it works, more or less, with the current version of Windows.

      I also don't share your rosy views of suspend and hibernate on other platforms. On my Powerbook, there is no hibernate at all (although you can ap

  • What are the alternatives? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rytis ( 907427 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @05:54AM (#14873508)
    Is this the only software that can force my Thinkpad R50e to fall asleep? Aren't there any others?
    I've compiled 2.6.15.4 kernel and the latest version of Suspend2 is for the 2.6.15.1 version. And now I am not even sure whether the patch is coming in a next month or it isn't coming at all.
    Gee, I have to turn it off all the time.

    • Re:What are the alternatives? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If the patch for 2.6.15.1 didn't apply to 2.6.15.4 cleanly Nigel would have released another patch. Generally the differences between the minor revisions aren't significant enough to warrant another patch. FWIW, I use the 2.6.15.1 patch on 2.6.15.4 and it applied/compiled/works just fine.

  • Distributions responsibility (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zaguar ( 881743 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @06:26AM (#14873612)
    This is an area where the major distro's - Ubuntu, Mandrake, Suse et al. need to pick up their game. Suspend2 is a great solution, but it is poorly integrated into the vanilla distro's. A few months ago, I tried Suspend2 with Hoary (Ubuntu 5.04) I had to:

    1. Download Ubuntu kernel sources
    2. Apply a patch-set
    3. Recompile the kernel and install the kernel
    4. And some other stuff I forgot - involving messing around in /etc and other areas - config files galore!

    Now I havent tried it with Breezy, but I am pretty sure there is no .deb/script on UbuntuForums.

    Why can't the disto's simply give the user Suspend2 fully integrated in their repective kernels?

    Surely not stability issues, because it was bug-free for me. Even a simple choice would be miles better than what the current situation. The distro makers have dropped the ball, let's see them pick it up.

    Oh wait - I just said that Ubuntu et al. is not perfect! Goodbye, karma.

  • While LKLM flame wars are lead between source pourists and swsusp2 proponents, linux continues to lack decent hibernation support. suspend2 is pretty much hackish, but historically that didn't prevent many features ending up in kernel, even prematurely.
    • I was about to put out a "Pick up the torch" post when I found yours, first.

      Is there some sort of licensing issue with swsusp2?

      Otherwise, I would have asked if there's any problem with someone else trying to push swsusp2 into the vanilla kernel. After all, the source is out there, isn't it? I haven't followed this in full detail, but I glanced occasionally at the threads.

  • I'm not resigning. (Score:5, Informative)

    by nigelcunningham ( 959738 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @07:58AM (#14873906)
    I guess I didn't write that email well enough - I tried to clearly say I'm not resigning, just switching full-time jobs, and as a result won't be working on Suspend as much. Given that it's already pretty mature, this won't have much effect on it's development, and I'll still be producing patches for vanilla kernels. Hope that helps. Nigel
    • This is a shame, but oh well, these things happen.

      I use suspend2 every day. It works fantastically well for me so congratulations on that. Your hard work has been _very_ much appreciated. I was hoping it would someday make it's way into the mainline kernel to replace the awful existing implementation. Perhaps the project is in need a new lead maintainer?

      Lets hope this is still the beginning for suspend2!

    • Just curious, why are you giving up on having suspend2 merged in mainline?

      • Re:I'm not resigning. (Score:4, Informative)

        by nigelcunningham ( 959738 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @04:32PM (#14878210)
        Mostly because Pavel has the death grip on the vanilla kernel. I'm still working on doing everything necessary to get it merged, including preparing a git tree. I figure that even if it doesn't get merged, it will make it easier for me to maintain and for distros to take up if they want to. Who knows - maybe Andrew and Linus will eventually decide to pick it up regardless of Pavel's objections. But they won't be able to do that if I don't get it ready. HTH.
    • Thanks, Nigel.

      Suspend2 is indeed quite mature and while I wish it was merged in the mainline patching is so easy it doesn't really matter.

      These days suspend2 has been fast, reliable, and even pretty with the fbsplash stuff. I would count it among the most perfectly working things on my laptop.

  • Misleading subject (Score:5, Informative)

    by .tom. ( 25103 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @08:54AM (#14874113)
    This post's subject is misleading:
    - suspend2 project is not suspended
    - Nigel Cunningam will keep working on it
    - it's only inclusion in vanilla kernel (mainline) which is unclear

    Trying to make puns in subjects is not always a good idead...
    • This post's subject is misleading:
      - suspend2 project is not suspended
      - Nigel Cunningam will keep working on it
      - it's only inclusion in vanilla kernel (mainline) which is unclear

      No, it is suspended. If it weren't suspended he would try to further the project. Instead he's going to maintain the patches at their current status --> No new features, no new hardware bug fixes. If it doesn't work for you now, it still won't so don't bother waiting.

      He's going to update the patch to work with new kernels and that
      • Hardware bug fixes aren't really my domain. Traditionally, I have included some so that suspend2 users don't have to go searching for extra patches, but they really belong upstream to start with so swsusp users can benefit too. New features... well, I think I've run out of things that need to be added. If you have a suggestion, I'd certainly consider it.
      • The subject *IS* misleading, face it, as with most /. subjects.

        I'd say it is unfair for suspend2 not to be included in the vanilla kernel and I'd use a subject that is more offensive towards the kernel developers because we have so many other features in there but not this one that is really great, really working and almost ready for shipping in the kernel.

        Such a behaviour from kernel maintainers would make any developer be dissapointed and not wanting to throw in more energy in his project.

  • That's fine. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Inoshiro ( 71693 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:03AM (#14874412) Homepage
    The correct answer is that the kernel needs to do this, not userland (per suspend1), because of all the layers that need their information preserved. Having any kind of userland help doesn't work, because suddenly you've broken the "every process is equal" approach to the scheduler. But it's also not correct to throw in a huge, complicated interface (suspend2).

    The correct answer is something like outlined here [lwn.net]: " If you want my cheerfully uninformed opinion, we should toss both of them out and implement suspend3, which is based on the exec/kdump infrastructure. There's so much duplication of intent here that it's not funny."

    You just have to reserve memory for a dump kernel. It's a much better trade off than making the scheduler stupid (suspend1), and keeps your kernel conceptually much simpler than a fancy kernel internal API (suspend2).
    • I'm sorry, but saying that shows a lack of understanding of how complex using kexec would really be. It's designed for a completely different purpose, and mangling it to do suspend would be complicated to say the least, and require the user to set aside a considerable amount of memory that just isn't really necessary.

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