On Wed, 15 Aug 2001, Rolf Heckemann wrote:
> > > You only need a hibernation partition if you a) want to enter suspend
> > > mode (i. e. powersaving without shutting your computer down, b) your
> >
> > Slight correction - you need the hibernate partition to enter hibernate mode
> > - you should be ablt to suspend just fine without it.
>
> I may be confused here - but wouldn't that be standby mode?
No - standby and suspend are distinct: In standby mode the machine is till
on, the kernel is still ticking away, but some (possibly only fuzzily
defined) power saving things, like spinning the HD down, turning off the
monitor, clocking the CPU down, etc have happened.
In suspend mode, the machine is almost off - just enough power is consumed
to keep the memory alive, and pretty much everything else is off. [There may be
a trickle of power to things like the NIC, so wake-on-lan type things can
happen].
In hibernate mode, the memory+videomem [as you say] is flushed to permanent
storage, and not even the memory is powered - The BIOS knows how to read the
state back from storage into memory, and the kernel knows how to come back
to life from there.
You may have been confused by the 'swsusp' project, which achieves something
similar to hibernation. I think it works by having a kernel that can boot
very quickly with a 'memory-image' file: The kernel flushes data to disk and
shuts down - then when it comes back, it detects the file, and instead of
going through the normal boot process, slurps the file into memory and takes
a running jump back to wherever it was when you shut down.
Same effect as hibernation, but no BIOS/APM/ACPI support is required.
Standby mode is, AFAIK, not often used, at least not explicitly by the user,
and has little impact on the user anyway, since the moment they start
prodding the machine, it should come back to 'full on' mode.
I use suspend a lot myself - my thinkpad will last 5~7 days while suspended,
and I generally turn it off if it's going to be out for longer.
Hibernate doesn't work for me - I ran the IBM utility to create a partition
for it, but I just get a beep and a 'system is invalid' message if I try to
suspend. Not sure why. It'd be nice if it worked, but I don't need it so
it's Ok - I may try out swsusp later.
--
Everyone would _like_ a first. By the time you get to the third year,
you become more fatalistic, until you get to the point when a kippered
herring with a Warwick crest on it would be as welcome as a degree.
- Stephen Williams
