I noticed that in hibernate mode the SmartBook appears to be leaving its backlight on, with the LCD black. This significantly drains the battery, while the button on the popup for selecting hibernate says the mode uses no power.

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Science, n. Investigation of natural phenomena.
Engineering, n. Domestication of natural phenomena.
Technology, n. Domesticated natural phenomena.

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\"It is essential for automatic computation that, instead of containing every single instruction necessary to carry out the program, the coded program include methods for generating instructions which are needed to carry out the program. ... One measure of the extent to which an automatic digital computer is used effectively is given by the ratio of the number of instructions formed in the machine to that of the instructions inserted into the machine initially.\" Mathematical Machines Volume I Digital Computers ©1961 Francis J. Murray

If so, then why is this ratio zero on most modern computer software?

Hi.

We've opened a bug ticket for this internally, and will try to add a fix for the next kernel release.


Johan,

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Johan Dams, Genesi USA Inc.
Director, Software Engineering

Yep, I have a blog... PurpleAlienPlanet

To clarify something: there is no such thing as Hibernate on ARM right now. A system goes into "suspend" but it will not save data to the disk in order to recover from a power failure.

If you see a Hibernate menu then you're running something quite old and need to patch up or install a new upower or maybe some other configuration items.

As for the backlight staying on during standby/suspend, yep. Ticket open, tests running. This is quite a major regression, however the driver did not change in the longest time, so the behavior should certainly not have changed either.

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Matt Sealey

Well, both the SmartBook and SmartTop that I bought this summer and have kept current on all updates show a hibernate option on the popup that comes up when the power button is pressed and a hibernate menu item on the menu that drops down when the power menu in the top right corner of the screen is clicked.

_________________
--

Science, n. Investigation of natural phenomena.
Engineering, n. Domestication of natural phenomena.
Technology, n. Domesticated natural phenomena.

--

\"It is essential for automatic computation that, instead of containing every single instruction necessary to carry out the program, the coded program include methods for generating instructions which are needed to carry out the program. ... One measure of the extent to which an automatic digital computer is used effectively is given by the ratio of the number of instructions formed in the machine to that of the instructions inserted into the machine initially.\" Mathematical Machines Volume I Digital Computers ©1961 Francis J. Murray

If so, then why is this ratio zero on most modern computer software?

If I select Suspend, the SmartBook does turn off the backlight. To wake it back up I have to press the power button.

If I select Hibernate, the SmartBook leaves the backlight on. To wake it back up I don't have to touch the power button, just press any key or wiggle the mouse.

_________________
--

Science, n. Investigation of natural phenomena.
Engineering, n. Domestication of natural phenomena.
Technology, n. Domesticated natural phenomena.

--

\"It is essential for automatic computation that, instead of containing every single instruction necessary to carry out the program, the coded program include methods for generating instructions which are needed to carry out the program. ... One measure of the extent to which an automatic digital computer is used effectively is given by the ratio of the number of instructions formed in the machine to that of the instructions inserted into the machine initially.\" Mathematical Machines Volume I Digital Computers ©1961 Francis J. Murray

If so, then why is this ratio zero on most modern computer software?

Hi Tim,

Hibernate does not really hibernate; it turns off the screen but nothing else. (hence the reason you can get it back on by mouse movement).

Suspend is the only supported power saving mode on the Efika.


Best regards,
Johan

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Johan Dams, Genesi USA Inc.
Director, Software Engineering

Yep, I have a blog... PurpleAlienPlanet

I know, you said that before. But they seem to be operating totally differently. Suspend ignores the mouse and can only wake up again with the power button. Suspend also has several seconds of disk activity before turning off the backlight, as if it was saving a bunch of stuff. Its almost as if they both exist but are swapped...

_________________
--

Science, n. Investigation of natural phenomena.
Engineering, n. Domestication of natural phenomena.
Technology, n. Domesticated natural phenomena.

--

\"It is essential for automatic computation that, instead of containing every single instruction necessary to carry out the program, the coded program include methods for generating instructions which are needed to carry out the program. ... One measure of the extent to which an automatic digital computer is used effectively is given by the ratio of the number of instructions formed in the machine to that of the instructions inserted into the machine initially.\" Mathematical Machines Volume I Digital Computers ©1961 Francis J. Murray

If so, then why is this ratio zero on most modern computer software?

Hi Tim,

Hibernate doesn't do anything but turn off the screen, as in a screen blank. That's why it comes back when moving mouse/pressing a key.

Suspend actually does a suspend to ram, but it needs time to do this: first the kernel stops userspace, then goes through the device tree to call suspend methods on each driver.

The reason that this state needs a button press to resume is that it requires a specific hardware interrupt to do this, and the keyboard and track pad don't generate this (also, sine the CPU is turned off, there is no keyboard handler, etc.).

The point here is that hibernate shouldn't be there as an option to begin with.


Johan.

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Johan Dams, Genesi USA Inc.
Director, Software Engineering

Yep, I have a blog... PurpleAlienPlanet

I guess you can cancel the bug report then, as suspend does turn off the backlight correctly. Only the nonexistant hibernate doesn't. Assuming hibernate doesn't exist, anything it does wrong isn't a bug, because you obviously can't select what doesn't exist.

_________________
--

Science, n. Investigation of natural phenomena.
Engineering, n. Domestication of natural phenomena.
Technology, n. Domesticated natural phenomena.

--

\"It is essential for automatic computation that, instead of containing every single instruction necessary to carry out the program, the coded program include methods for generating instructions which are needed to carry out the program. ... One measure of the extent to which an automatic digital computer is used effectively is given by the ratio of the number of instructions formed in the machine to that of the instructions inserted into the machine initially.\" Mathematical Machines Volume I Digital Computers ©1961 Francis J. Murray

If so, then why is this ratio zero on most modern computer software?

Hi.

Well, it's still a bug as it leads to confusion :-)


Johan.

_________________
Johan Dams, Genesi USA Inc.
Director, Software Engineering

Yep, I have a blog... PurpleAlienPlanet