/proc/acpi/alarm not working

/proc/acpi/alarm not working

[Lorenzo Colitti]

Hi,

I am trying to use /proc/acpi/alarm to wake my laptop from S3 and go 
into S4 after a fixed amount of time. But I can't get /proc/acpi/alarm 
to work.

I tried 'echo "2005-06-08 12:47:00" > alarm', both using local time and 
with 2 hours plus or minus since I'm not sure if the alarm file is in 
UTC or not.

A 'cat alarm' displays the time I set it to, and there are no errors in 
dmest, but nothing seems to happen. If the laptop is on, I see no acpi 
event being triggered. If it's in S3, it doesn't wake up unless I press 
the power button.

Is there something I'm doing wrong? If not, how do I debug this?


Cheers,
Lorenzo

P.S. This works on Windows, so the DSDT should support it...


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Re: /proc/acpi/alarm not working

[Lorenzo Colitti]

Li, Shaohua wrote:
>>A 'cat alarm' displays the time I set it to, and there are no errors in
>>dmest, but nothing seems to happen. If the laptop is on, I see no acpi
>>event being triggered. If it's in S3, it doesn't wake up unless I press
>>the power button.
> 
> Which kernel version are you using?
> Alarm in latest kernel works for my two laptops.

Oh yes, sorry for not mentioning this. I am using 2.6.11.10 patched with 
software suspend 2 and fbsplash.


Thanks,
Lorenzo


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Re: /proc/acpi/alarm not working

[Pavel Machek]

Hi!

> I am trying to use /proc/acpi/alarm to wake my laptop from S3 and go 
> into S4 after a fixed amount of time. But I can't get 
> /proc/acpi/alarm to work.

That sounds dangerous to me... drive might spin up during bad time when being
transported...

Why not enter S3 but save image to disk in case battery runs out?
				Pavel
-- 
64 bytes from 195.113.31.123: icmp_seq=28 ttl=51 time=448769.1 ms         



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Re: /proc/acpi/alarm not working

[Nils Faerber]

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Pavel Machek wrote:
> Hi!
Hi!

>>I am trying to use /proc/acpi/alarm to wake my laptop from S3 and go 
>>into S4 after a fixed amount of time. But I can't get 
>>/proc/acpi/alarm to work.
> That sounds dangerous to me... drive might spin up during bad time when being
> transported...

I am also missing that functionality!
My older Lifebook was able to do that automatically using APM. This was
very convenient because you never had to care about usign one over the
other suspend method. You simply close the lid - dot.
When you turn the machine back on it will still have almost the same
battery power left.
The idea is that if you do not use the machine for several minutes
(hour) the probability is high that you will not do so for another
extended period of time which makes suspend to RAM a bad thing, sucking
your battery to empty (and we all know that batteries do not like to get
drained).
For the short term suspend the machine will simply suspend to RAM and
come back on quite quickly.

I always had the timeout to 30 minutes and was very hapy with it.

And I also have not had any problem with my harddisk at all - I just
sometimes wondered what would happen if I close the lid and the machine
starts to suspend to disk while sitting in an airplane ;) but that's
another problem.

> Why not enter S3 but save image to disk in case battery runs out?

Two reasons:
1. Not necessary in most cases (at least it does not give a huge benefit).
2. Too much battery drain causing battery to wear out too early.

> 				Pavel
CU
  nils faerber

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Re: /proc/acpi/alarm not working

[Pavel Machek]

Hi!

> >>I am trying to use /proc/acpi/alarm to wake my laptop from S3 and go 
> >>into S4 after a fixed amount of time. But I can't get 
> >>/proc/acpi/alarm to work.
> > That sounds dangerous to me... drive might spin up during bad time when being
> > transported...
> 
> I am also missing that functionality!
> My older Lifebook was able to do that automatically using APM. This was
> very convenient because you never had to care about usign one over the
> other suspend method. You simply close the lid - dot.
...
> I always had the timeout to 30 minutes and was very hapy with it.

> And I also have not had any problem with my harddisk at all - I just
> sometimes wondered what would happen if I close the lid and the machine
> starts to suspend to disk while sitting in an airplane ;) but that's
> another problem.

Really? Turning on machine at some random time seems dangerous to
me. Airplane is one example. Or imagine closing lid than going
horseback riding with your laptop. Machine can probably survive that
kind of vibrations when powered down, but I do not think it would
survive them with disk spinning...

> > Why not enter S3 but save image to disk in case battery runs out?
> 
> Two reasons:
> 1. Not necessary in most cases (at least it does not give a huge benefit).
> 2. Too much battery drain causing battery to wear out too early.

IBM was calling it "redisafe". I'm not sure how fast it killed the
batteries...

								Pavel
-- 
teflon -- maybe it is a trademark, but it should not be.


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Re: /proc/acpi/alarm not working

[Karol Kozimor]

Thus wrote Pavel Machek:
> > I am trying to use /proc/acpi/alarm to wake my laptop from S3 and go 
> > into S4 after a fixed amount of time. But I can't get 
> > /proc/acpi/alarm to work.
> That sounds dangerous to me... drive might spin up during bad time when being
> transported...

Why use S3 if you intend to transport the laptop in the first place?

> Why not enter S3 but save image to disk in case battery runs out?

I believe Nigel's implementation is capable of doing so.
Best regards,

-- 
Karol 'sziwan' Kozimor
sziwan-DETuoxkZsSqrDJvtcaxF/A@public.gmane.org


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Re: /proc/acpi/alarm not working

[Nils Faerber]

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Karol Kozimor wrote:
> Thus wrote Pavel Machek:
>>>I am trying to use /proc/acpi/alarm to wake my laptop from S3 and go 
>>>into S4 after a fixed amount of time. But I can't get 
>>>/proc/acpi/alarm to work.
>>That sounds dangerous to me... drive might spin up during bad time when being
>>transported...
> Why use S3 if you intend to transport the laptop in the first place?

Because you do not necessarily know that you are going to transport it.

My typical use case is that I use the machine at some point of day, then
simply close the lid, it goes to S3. Then I find that I forgot something
or such, open the lid and it resumes almost instantaniously. I close it
again after work is done.
And this can happen several times a day, my brain is sometimes a mess ;)

But if I do not resume it in time it will simply fall to deep sleep
(S4), saving battery power and lifetime. And I do not have to waste a
single moment thinking about "Do I want to use again soon or not?".

>>Why not enter S3 but save image to disk in case battery runs out?

As I said, the point of battery running out is IMHO too late. Cycling
Li-* batteries a lot reduces their lifetime significantly.

> Best regards,
Kind regards
  nils faerber

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