3 * BIG FAT WARNING *********************************************************
5 * If you touch anything on disk between suspend and resume...
6 * ...kiss your data goodbye.
8 * If you do resume from initrd after your filesystems are mounted...
9 * ...bye bye root partition.
10 * [this is actually same case as above]
12 * If you have unsupported (*) devices using DMA, you may have some
13 * problems. If your disk driver does not support suspend... (IDE does),
14 * it may cause some problems, too. If you change kernel command line
15 * between suspend and resume, it may do something wrong. If you change
16 * your hardware while system is suspended... well, it was not good idea;
17 * but it will probably only crash.
19 * (*) suspend/resume support is needed to make it safe.
21 * If you have any filesystems on USB devices mounted before software suspend,
22 * they won't be accessible after resume and you may lose data, as though
23 * you have unplugged the USB devices with mounted filesystems on them;
24 * see the FAQ below for details. (This is not true for more traditional
25 * power states like "standby", which normally don't turn USB off.)
28 You need to append resume=/dev/your_swap_partition to kernel command
29 line or specify it using /sys/power/resume.
32 If using a swapfile you can also specify a resume offset using
33 resume_offset=<number> on the kernel command line or specify it
34 in /sys/power/resume_offset.
36 After preparing then you suspend by
38 echo shutdown > /sys/power/disk; echo disk > /sys/power/state
40 . If you feel ACPI works pretty well on your system, you might try
42 echo platform > /sys/power/disk; echo disk > /sys/power/state
44 . If you would like to write hibernation image to swap and then suspend
45 to RAM (provided your platform supports it), you can try
47 echo suspend > /sys/power/disk; echo disk > /sys/power/state
49 . If you have SATA disks, you'll need recent kernels with SATA suspend
50 support. For suspend and resume to work, make sure your disk drivers
51 are built into kernel -- not modules. [There's way to make
52 suspend/resume with modular disk drivers, see FAQ, but you probably
55 If you want to limit the suspend image size to N bytes, do
57 echo N > /sys/power/image_size
59 before suspend (it is limited to 500 MB by default).
61 . The resume process checks for the presence of the resume device,
62 if found, it then checks the contents for the hibernation image signature.
63 If both are found, it resumes the hibernation image.
65 . The resume process may be triggered in two ways:
66 1) During lateinit: If resume=/dev/your_swap_partition is specified on
67 the kernel command line, lateinit runs the resume process. If the
68 resume device has not been probed yet, the resume process fails and
70 2) Manually from an initrd or initramfs: May be run from
71 the init script by using the /sys/power/resume file. It is vital
72 that this be done prior to remounting any filesystems (even as
73 read-only) otherwise data may be corrupted.
75 Article about goals and implementation of Software Suspend for Linux
76 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
78 Last revised: 2003-10-20 by Pavel Machek
80 Idea and goals to achieve
82 Nowadays it is common in several laptops that they have a suspend button. It
83 saves the state of the machine to a filesystem or to a partition and switches
84 to standby mode. Later resuming the machine the saved state is loaded back to
85 ram and the machine can continue its work. It has two real benefits. First we
86 save ourselves the time machine goes down and later boots up, energy costs
87 are real high when running from batteries. The other gain is that we don't have to
88 interrupt our programs so processes that are calculating something for a long
89 time shouldn't need to be written interruptible.
91 swsusp saves the state of the machine into active swaps and then reboots or
92 powerdowns. You must explicitly specify the swap partition to resume from with
93 ``resume='' kernel option. If signature is found it loads and restores saved
94 state. If the option ``noresume'' is specified as a boot parameter, it skips
95 the resuming. If the option ``hibernate=nocompress'' is specified as a boot
96 parameter, it saves hibernation image without compression.
98 In the meantime while the system is suspended you should not add/remove any
99 of the hardware, write to the filesystems, etc.
104 There are three different interfaces you can use, /proc/acpi should
107 In a really perfect world:
108 echo 1 > /proc/acpi/sleep # for standby
109 echo 2 > /proc/acpi/sleep # for suspend to ram
110 echo 3 > /proc/acpi/sleep # for suspend to ram, but with more power conservative
111 echo 4 > /proc/acpi/sleep # for suspend to disk
112 echo 5 > /proc/acpi/sleep # for shutdown unfriendly the system
115 echo 4b > /proc/acpi/sleep # for suspend to disk via s4bios
117 Frequently Asked Questions
118 ==========================
120 Q: well, suspending a server is IMHO a really stupid thing,
121 but... (Diego Zuccato):
123 A: You bought new UPS for your server. How do you install it without
124 bringing machine down? Suspend to disk, rearrange power cables,
127 You have your server on UPS. Power died, and UPS is indicating 30
128 seconds to failure. What do you do? Suspend to disk.
131 Q: Maybe I'm missing something, but why don't the regular I/O paths work?
133 A: We do use the regular I/O paths. However we cannot restore the data
134 to its original location as we load it. That would create an
135 inconsistent kernel state which would certainly result in an oops.
136 Instead, we load the image into unused memory and then atomically copy
137 it back to it original location. This implies, of course, a maximum
138 image size of half the amount of memory.
140 There are two solutions to this:
142 * require half of memory to be free during suspend. That way you can
143 read "new" data onto free spots, then cli and copy
145 * assume we had special "polling" ide driver that only uses memory
146 between 0-640KB. That way, I'd have to make sure that 0-640KB is free
147 during suspending, but otherwise it would work...
149 suspend2 shares this fundamental limitation, but does not include user
150 data and disk caches into "used memory" by saving them in
151 advance. That means that the limitation goes away in practice.
153 Q: Does linux support ACPI S4?
155 A: Yes. That's what echo platform > /sys/power/disk does.
157 Q: What is 'suspend2'?
159 A: suspend2 is 'Software Suspend 2', a forked implementation of
160 suspend-to-disk which is available as separate patches for 2.4 and 2.6
161 kernels from swsusp.sourceforge.net. It includes support for SMP, 4GB
162 highmem and preemption. It also has a extensible architecture that
163 allows for arbitrary transformations on the image (compression,
164 encryption) and arbitrary backends for writing the image (eg to swap
165 or an NFS share[Work In Progress]). Questions regarding suspend2
166 should be sent to the mailing list available through the suspend2
167 website, and not to the Linux Kernel Mailing List. We are working
168 toward merging suspend2 into the mainline kernel.
170 Q: What is the freezing of tasks and why are we using it?
172 A: The freezing of tasks is a mechanism by which user space processes and some
173 kernel threads are controlled during hibernation or system-wide suspend (on some
174 architectures). See freezing-of-tasks.txt for details.
176 Q: What is the difference between "platform" and "shutdown"?
180 shutdown: save state in linux, then tell bios to powerdown
182 platform: save state in linux, then tell bios to powerdown and blink
185 "platform" is actually right thing to do where supported, but
186 "shutdown" is most reliable (except on ACPI systems).
188 Q: I do not understand why you have such strong objections to idea of
191 A: Do selective suspend during runtime power management, that's okay. But
192 it's useless for suspend-to-disk. (And I do not see how you could use
193 it for suspend-to-ram, I hope you do not want that).
195 Lets see, so you suggest to
197 * SUSPEND all but swap device and parents
199 * Write image to disk
200 * SUSPEND swap device and parents
203 Oh no, that does not work, if swap device or its parents uses DMA,
204 you've corrupted data. You'd have to do
206 * SUSPEND all but swap device and parents
207 * FREEZE swap device and parents
209 * UNFREEZE swap device and parents
211 * SUSPEND swap device and parents
213 Which means that you still need that FREEZE state, and you get more
214 complicated code. (And I have not yet introduce details like system
217 Q: There don't seem to be any generally useful behavioral
218 distinctions between SUSPEND and FREEZE.
220 A: Doing SUSPEND when you are asked to do FREEZE is always correct,
221 but it may be unnecessarily slow. If you want your driver to stay simple,
222 slowness may not matter to you. It can always be fixed later.
224 For devices like disk it does matter, you do not want to spindown for
227 Q: After resuming, system is paging heavily, leading to very bad interactivity.
231 cat /proc/[0-9]*/maps | grep / | sed 's:.* /:/:' | sort -u | while read file
233 test -f "$file" && cat "$file" > /dev/null
236 after resume. swapoff -a; swapon -a may also be useful.
238 Q: What happens to devices during swsusp? They seem to be resumed
239 during system suspend?
241 A: That's correct. We need to resume them if we want to write image to
242 disk. Whole sequence goes like
246 running system, user asks for suspend-to-disk
248 user processes are stopped
250 suspend(PMSG_FREEZE): devices are frozen so that they don't interfere
253 state snapshot: copy of whole used memory is taken with interrupts disabled
255 resume(): devices are woken up so that we can write image to swap
259 suspend(PMSG_SUSPEND): suspend devices so that we can power off
265 (is actually pretty similar)
267 running system, user asks for suspend-to-disk
269 user processes are stopped (in common case there are none, but with resume-from-initrd, no one knows)
273 suspend(PMSG_FREEZE): devices are frozen so that they don't interfere
274 with image restoration
276 image restoration: rewrite memory with image
278 resume(): devices are woken up so that system can continue
280 thaw all user processes
282 Q: What is this 'Encrypt suspend image' for?
284 A: First of all: it is not a replacement for dm-crypt encrypted swap.
285 It cannot protect your computer while it is suspended. Instead it does
286 protect from leaking sensitive data after resume from suspend.
288 Think of the following: you suspend while an application is running
289 that keeps sensitive data in memory. The application itself prevents
290 the data from being swapped out. Suspend, however, must write these
291 data to swap to be able to resume later on. Without suspend encryption
292 your sensitive data are then stored in plaintext on disk. This means
293 that after resume your sensitive data are accessible to all
294 applications having direct access to the swap device which was used
295 for suspend. If you don't need swap after resume these data can remain
296 on disk virtually forever. Thus it can happen that your system gets
297 broken in weeks later and sensitive data which you thought were
298 encrypted and protected are retrieved and stolen from the swap device.
299 To prevent this situation you should use 'Encrypt suspend image'.
301 During suspend a temporary key is created and this key is used to
302 encrypt the data written to disk. When, during resume, the data was
303 read back into memory the temporary key is destroyed which simply
304 means that all data written to disk during suspend are then
305 inaccessible so they can't be stolen later on. The only thing that
306 you must then take care of is that you call 'mkswap' for the swap
307 partition used for suspend as early as possible during regular
308 boot. This asserts that any temporary key from an oopsed suspend or
309 from a failed or aborted resume is erased from the swap device.
311 As a rule of thumb use encrypted swap to protect your data while your
312 system is shut down or suspended. Additionally use the encrypted
313 suspend image to prevent sensitive data from being stolen after
316 Q: Can I suspend to a swap file?
318 A: Generally, yes, you can. However, it requires you to use the "resume=" and
319 "resume_offset=" kernel command line parameters, so the resume from a swap file
320 cannot be initiated from an initrd or initramfs image. See
321 swsusp-and-swap-files.txt for details.
323 Q: Is there a maximum system RAM size that is supported by swsusp?
325 A: It should work okay with highmem.
327 Q: Does swsusp (to disk) use only one swap partition or can it use
328 multiple swap partitions (aggregate them into one logical space)?
330 A: Only one swap partition, sorry.
332 Q: If my application(s) causes lots of memory & swap space to be used
333 (over half of the total system RAM), is it correct that it is likely
334 to be useless to try to suspend to disk while that app is running?
336 A: No, it should work okay, as long as your app does not mlock()
337 it. Just prepare big enough swap partition.
339 Q: What information is useful for debugging suspend-to-disk problems?
341 A: Well, last messages on the screen are always useful. If something
342 is broken, it is usually some kernel driver, therefore trying with as
343 little as possible modules loaded helps a lot. I also prefer people to
344 suspend from console, preferably without X running. Booting with
345 init=/bin/bash, then swapon and starting suspend sequence manually
346 usually does the trick. Then it is good idea to try with latest
349 Q: How can distributions ship a swsusp-supporting kernel with modular
350 disk drivers (especially SATA)?
352 A: Well, it can be done, load the drivers, then do echo into
353 /sys/power/resume file from initrd. Be sure not to mount
354 anything, not even read-only mount, or you are going to lose your
357 Q: How do I make suspend more verbose?
359 A: If you want to see any non-error kernel messages on the virtual
360 terminal the kernel switches to during suspend, you have to set the
361 kernel console loglevel to at least 4 (KERN_WARNING), for example by
364 # save the old loglevel
365 read LOGLEVEL DUMMY < /proc/sys/kernel/printk
366 # set the loglevel so we see the progress bar.
367 # if the level is higher than needed, we leave it alone.
368 if [ $LOGLEVEL -lt 5 ]; then
369 echo 5 > /proc/sys/kernel/printk
373 read IMG_SZ < /sys/power/image_size
374 echo -n disk > /sys/power/state
378 # if image_size > 0 (without kernel support, IMG_SZ will be zero),
379 # then try again with image_size set to zero.
380 if [ $RET -ne 0 -a $IMG_SZ -ne 0 ]; then # try again with minimal image size
381 echo 0 > /sys/power/image_size
382 echo -n disk > /sys/power/state
386 # restore previous loglevel
387 echo $LOGLEVEL > /proc/sys/kernel/printk
390 Q: Is this true that if I have a mounted filesystem on a USB device and
391 I suspend to disk, I can lose data unless the filesystem has been mounted
394 A: That's right ... if you disconnect that device, you may lose data.
395 In fact, even with "-o sync" you can lose data if your programs have
396 information in buffers they haven't written out to a disk you disconnect,
397 or if you disconnect before the device finished saving data you wrote.
399 Software suspend normally powers down USB controllers, which is equivalent
400 to disconnecting all USB devices attached to your system.
402 Your system might well support low-power modes for its USB controllers
403 while the system is asleep, maintaining the connection, using true sleep
404 modes like "suspend-to-RAM" or "standby". (Don't write "disk" to the
405 /sys/power/state file; write "standby" or "mem".) We've not seen any
406 hardware that can use these modes through software suspend, although in
407 theory some systems might support "platform" modes that won't break the
410 Remember that it's always a bad idea to unplug a disk drive containing a
411 mounted filesystem. That's true even when your system is asleep! The
412 safest thing is to unmount all filesystems on removable media (such USB,
413 Firewire, CompactFlash, MMC, external SATA, or even IDE hotplug bays)
414 before suspending; then remount them after resuming.
416 There is a work-around for this problem. For more information, see
417 Documentation/driver-api/usb/persist.rst.
419 Q: Can I suspend-to-disk using a swap partition under LVM?
421 A: Yes and No. You can suspend successfully, but the kernel will not be able
422 to resume on its own. You need an initramfs that can recognize the resume
423 situation, activate the logical volume containing the swap volume (but not
424 touch any filesystems!), and eventually call
426 echo -n "$major:$minor" > /sys/power/resume
428 where $major and $minor are the respective major and minor device numbers of
431 uswsusp works with LVM, too. See http://suspend.sourceforge.net/
433 Q: I upgraded the kernel from 2.6.15 to 2.6.16. Both kernels were
434 compiled with the similar configuration files. Anyway I found that
435 suspend to disk (and resume) is much slower on 2.6.16 compared to
436 2.6.15. Any idea for why that might happen or how can I speed it up?
438 A: This is because the size of the suspend image is now greater than
439 for 2.6.15 (by saving more data we can get more responsive system
442 There's the /sys/power/image_size knob that controls the size of the
443 image. If you set it to 0 (eg. by echo 0 > /sys/power/image_size as
444 root), the 2.6.15 behavior should be restored. If it is still too
445 slow, take a look at suspend.sf.net -- userland suspend is faster and
446 supports LZF compression to speed it up further.