Dell XPS 13 (9350) Hibernation Issue [SOLVED]

adrian1112 · 2016-09-25 10:53:05

Hi everyone, don't normally post on forums for help but one issue has me completely stumped. I've recently installed arch on my Dell XPS 13 9350 (i7, 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM) and almost everything is working, the main issue that I can't seem to be able to solve is that sometime the computer will not hibernate successfully all of the time. Running "systemctl hibernate" will normally yield successful hibernation but I've noticed that if the session was particularly 'demanding' (darktable raw-edits, many tabs open in chromium) on RAM, when I issue the hibernate command, the screen goes black but yet the power (fans and power light) is still on and the only way to shutdown the PC is by holding down the power button. Upon starting the computer again, it does not resume but instead starts to boot from scratch suggesting that hibernation was not successful.

This only appears to happen when there was 'heavy usage' prior to hibernation. If I was only browsing the web or editing a document, it hibernates just fine and resumes too. My SWAP partition is on an LVM and is the same size as my RAM so I don't think that could be the issue. Everything else that matters seems to work fine (except not being able the pass variables to the EFISTUB boot loader so I'm stuck with GRUB) but this issue is extremely annoying when travelling.

Anyone has any ideas as I couldn't find anything in my search.

Don't know what HW/SW information to post so ask and I will provide!

Last edited by adrian1112 (2016-09-26 19:26:50)

ewaller · 2016-09-25 16:13:03

By hibernate, I assume you mean suspend to disk. Are you using a swap file or a swap partition? How big is the partition? How much RAM do you have?
At the time you entered hibernation, had you been using any of your swap space?

adrian1112 · 2016-09-25 22:09:05

ewaller wrote:

By hibernate, I assume you mean suspend to disk. Are you using a swap file or a swap partition? How big is the partition? How much RAM do you have?
At the time you entered hibernation, had you been using any of your swap space?

Thanks for replying!

Yeah, by hibernation I mean suspension to disk (suspension to RAM seems to work just fine). My swap partition (sits in a LVM group along with the root and home logical volumes on top of a LUKS volume) is 8GiB in size which is equal to the physical RAM in the laptop (7.6GiB is reported as being available) and the SWAP is empty before I attempt to suspend to disk. If I hibernate immediately after starting from a cold boot it will hibernate to disk properly but if I open and close a few programs and try again it will fail (the screen turns of but the fan and power light remain running as mentioned in the OP). It's almost as if there is not enough swap space to accommodate the RAM contents but that isn't the case.

Last edited by adrian1112 (2016-09-25 22:10:17)

ewaller · 2016-09-25 22:56:27

Yeah, the typical wisdom is to have the swap space be twice the RAM size. That could be the issue. What if you were to set up a larger swap file instead of a swap partition for a while as a debugging step.

promarbler14 · 2016-09-25 23:10:19

You could also try this before suspension to disk:
sudo bash -c 'sync; echo 3 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches'
This *may* improve the chances of success.

adrian1112 · 2016-09-26 19:25:21

So, I increased my SWAP size to 16GiB and it seems to work fine now even after heavy workloads. Still a bit odd as my old laptop had 4 gigs of ram and a 4G SWAP parition and I never had issues even after longer sessions with many programs so I didn't think I needed such a large SWAP partition - quite annoying with a small SSD.

Thanks all!

frank604 · 2016-09-26 20:18:03

adrian1112 wrote:

So, I increased my SWAP size to 16GiB and it seems to work fine now even after heavy workloads. Still a bit odd as my old laptop had 4 gigs of ram and a 4G SWAP parition and I never had issues even after longer sessions with many programs so I didn't think I needed such a large SWAP partition - quite annoying with a small SSD.
Thanks all!

You could look into...

1) buy flush 128G sdcard for data (books, movie, etc) to save ssd space (https://www.amazon.com/Spinido-microSD- … ge_o07_s02)
2) what is your swappiness on older laptop vs current?
3) is old laptop running same DE/WM, apps? Version of these similar?
4) why do you need to hibernate instead of suspending to ram?
5) play around with the swap file size, might not need all of 16G. Try 15 then 14... See what the perfect size is for your use case.

adrian1112 · 2016-09-26 20:53:56

frank604 wrote:

adrian1112 wrote:
So, I increased my SWAP size to 16GiB and it seems to work fine now even after heavy workloads. Still a bit odd as my old laptop had 4 gigs of ram and a 4G SWAP parition and I never had issues even after longer sessions with many programs so I didn't think I needed such a large SWAP partition - quite annoying with a small SSD.
Thanks all!
You could look into...
1) buy flush 128G sdcard for data (books, movie, etc) to save ssd space (https://www.amazon.com/Spinido-microSD- … ge_o07_s02)
2) what is your swappiness on older laptop vs current?
3) is old laptop running same DE/WM, apps? Version of these similar?
4) why do you need to hibernate instead of suspending to ram?
5) play around with the swap file size, might not need all of 16G. Try 15 then 14... See what the perfect size is for your use case.

I'll look into the SD card idea - thanks for the link. I always have my external HDD with me where all my photos live but more space "inside" the laptop is always good.

My snappiness was set to 1 on both laptops, it was one of the first config changes I make when installing arch. Also, thanks for suggesting reducingn the swap size. I'll be slowly training down the logical volume for the swap and see when the problem reappears.

Cheers!

Arch Linux

#1 2016-09-25 10:53:05

Dell XPS 13 (9350) Hibernation Issue [SOLVED]

#2 2016-09-25 16:13:03

Re: Dell XPS 13 (9350) Hibernation Issue [SOLVED]

#3 2016-09-25 22:09:05

Re: Dell XPS 13 (9350) Hibernation Issue [SOLVED]

#4 2016-09-25 22:56:27

Re: Dell XPS 13 (9350) Hibernation Issue [SOLVED]

#5 2016-09-25 23:10:19

Re: Dell XPS 13 (9350) Hibernation Issue [SOLVED]

#6 2016-09-26 19:25:21

Re: Dell XPS 13 (9350) Hibernation Issue [SOLVED]

#7 2016-09-26 20:18:03

Re: Dell XPS 13 (9350) Hibernation Issue [SOLVED]

#8 2016-09-26 20:53:56

Re: Dell XPS 13 (9350) Hibernation Issue [SOLVED]

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