[wplug] Hibernating Fedora Core 3

[Tim Lesher]

On Sun, Feb 27, 2005 at 12:39:54PM -0500, Bill Moran wrote:
> I just got a new workstation at work, and I'm running FC3 on it (more on
> that later)
> 
> Since it's a newer desktop, it's got all the various ACPI stuff
> available.  Since I'm kind of a tree hugger, I'd like to figure out how
> to tell the system to hibernate, so I can save precious electricity while
> I'm sleeping or otherwise not computing.
> 
> My web searches have resulted in HOWTOs involving patching the kernel and
> lots of people complaining that hibernation doesn't work correctly on
> their system.  I'm hoping someone has first-hand experience with this and
> can point me to a reliable explanation on how to accomplish this without
> problems.

I ran into serious issues with Linux (Fedora, Debian, and Ubuntu) and
ACPI, which eventually led me to (surprise!) FreeBSD, which has worked
much better.

The crux of the problem seems to be this:  manufacturers write bad
ACPI code.  The ACPI compiler provided by Microsoft follows Postel's
Law (be lenient in what you accept), so the marginal code runs fine on
Windows, and the manfacturers declare it "good" and ship it.

The result is that other ACPI implementations (like the Intel
reference, and Linux and FreeBSD implementations) that are more strict
don't work.

The people who do the Linux implementation have taken a harder line:
they refuse to support anything that isn't 100% correct, which leaves
a lot of end users frustrated.

On the other hand, the folks who do the FreeBSD implementation have
been more pragmatic about the issue, and they seem to be working
closely with the Intel ACPI folks; they've added some compatibility
hacks to work around the most common bugs, so even some moderately
broken machines (like my laptop) work, for the most part.

-- 
Tim Lesher <tim at lesher.ws>
http://www.lesher.ws