[wplug] Hibernating Fedora Core 3

[Bill Moran]

Tim Lesher <tim at lesher.ws> wrote:

> 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.

Yeah, I've been pretty impressed with how well FreeBSD works with
ACPI.  Unfortunately, I've been unable to get VMWare running under
FreeBSD, which forces me to use something else.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com