Arch Linux

mackram

Member

Registered: 2016-03-21

Posts: 5

Suspend Issues with Thinkpad P50

Hello Community,

So I have just gotten a new Thinkpad P50 running the Intel Xeon processor with an Nvidia GPU. I have installed a bare metals arch distribution and then manually setup X on it. My current issue is as follows:

1- Unplug the Laptop from the power
2- Close Lid
3- Notice that the red indicator for sleep does not blink and that the fan starts screaming
4- Open Lid and notice that the system is completely frozen (although you can see the screen no keyboard input or mouse input)
5- Manually shutdown to stop rising temperature (as evidenced by hot air coming out from the fan now)

I would like to point out the following:

1- This issue does not happen if you try to close lid while laptop is on AC power
2- A variation of this issue (does not come out of sleep) happens if I close the lid while laptop on AC power and then unplug it
3- I have tried installing laptop-mode-tools and acpid both of which did not help (have since removed both)
4- Checking journalctl reveals nothing. To be exact the moment the lid is closed system is forzen and no input is logged by journalctl. Not even the event ACPI: Lid Closed is logged into journalctl. Last entry is usually a normal entry of some action i was taking prior to closing of lid. (no consistency)
5- Issue happens irrespective of whether X is started or not
6- [Updated] Using nvidia propriety drivers or the nouvea open source one does not change the issue

Things that might be relevant:
1- Laptop has two HDs setup as follows
  - SSD drive:  /         ext4
                    /home  ext4  (LUKS encrypted)
                   /boot     UEFI
  - HD drive    /var      ReiserFS
                   /data     ext4 (LUKS encrypted)
                   /tmp     ext4
                   swap
2- Running nvidia propriety drivers for Nvidia Quatro M2000
3- Using Kernel 4.4.5-1

I would really appreciate any form of indication of where I should look next to figure out this problem (it is a major issue for me stopping me from completely moving to my new laptop)

Thanks,

Mackram

Last edited by mackram (2016-03-21 14:52:49)

atomicbeef

Member

Registered: 2015-09-30

Posts: 98

Re: Suspend Issues with Thinkpad P50

Hello mackram and welcome to the forums!

Does this issue happen with other Linux distros? From what you have described, this sounds like a kernel issue to me. If this bug is reproducible on other distributions, you should report it to the kernel developers.

mackram

Member

Registered: 2016-03-21

Posts: 5

Re: Suspend Issues with Thinkpad P50

Hey atomicbeef,

Thanks for the welcome .

Actually I have not tried any other Linux distro yet, but come to think of it my other thinkpad (also running arch) has linux kernel 4.2.5 which works with no issues and no special configuration. I am going to see if I can set up that kernel version on my the new P50 and if this resolves the issue.

tomgco

Member

Registered: 2016-02-23

Posts: 6

Re: Suspend Issues with Thinkpad P50

Mackram,

I have a P50 as well and get the same issue: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=209261

It seems it might be due to the newer linux kernels (4.4+) and intel skylake, however, I'm stumped on how to diagnose it further (I need to run 4.4+) for work.

mackram

Member

Registered: 2016-03-21

Posts: 5

Re: Suspend Issues with Thinkpad P50

So I have attempted the following:

1- Install the official linux-lts package (ie kernel 4.1.x) and the problem has changed so that the laptop now actually suspends on battery but when I try to wake it up I get a completely blank screen. Journal does not show any errors within this timeframe
2- Installed a backport kernel for version 4.2.5 but I was not able to boot this as the kernel bootup dropped me to emergency shell before letting me to type in the passwords for my encrypted drives (not sure if maybe i missed something here)
3- Tried backport kernel for version 4.3.3 and same as 2

Not sure what to do now, suggestions would be helpful.

atomicbeef

Member

Registered: 2015-09-30

Posts: 98

Re: Suspend Issues with Thinkpad P50

Since this definitely seems like a kernel issue, you should create a bug report here.

Last edited by atomicbeef (2016-03-23 02:57:41)

mackram

Member

Registered: 2016-03-21

Posts: 5

Re: Suspend Issues with Thinkpad P50

So I am no longer convinced this is a kernel issue based on the below tests.

Running

systemctl supsend

works properly irrespective if power is applied or not.  This also works if it is called before closing the lid. Furthermore reopening the lid properly wakes the laptop up with no issues.

What this tells me is that the problem is very specific to the Laptop Lid Switch off process which seems to be doing something besides simply calling the systemd suspend service.

Am I right in my analysis or are there other suggestions?

Last edited by mackram (2016-03-23 14:53:57)

mackram

Member

Registered: 2016-03-21

Posts: 5

Re: Suspend Issues with Thinkpad P50

Okay I thought to add this here as a separate reply (hope i am not breaking any rules). So I attempted to modify the file /etc/systemd/logind.conf so that I have the following uncommented

HandleLidSwitch=ignore

Then I tested that this has been properly updated by attempting to close and open lid while on AC power. As expected nothing happened and the lid change was ignored.

However when I tried the same thing on the battery I got the same issues as before (ie fan screaming and completely frozen system). Note that this is a fresh install with only the following packages installed: base, base-devel, emacs

atomicbeef

Member

Registered: 2015-09-30

Posts: 98

Re: Suspend Issues with Thinkpad P50

Hi mackram and sorry for the late reply,

According to the wiki, the default behavior for the lid closing is to call the systemd suspend service. This still sounds like a kernel bug so I would report it on the kernel bug tracker that I linked to in my last post.