[ale] Linux swap space vs hibernate, power shutdown settings

[Scott Castaline]

On 11/08/2011 10:59 AM, Ron Frazier wrote:
> David,
>
> I've done some testing and gotten some, shall we say, interesting results.
>
> The specs for my machine are: AMD Phenom II X4 quad core CPU, 8 GB RAM,
> Ubuntu 10.04.
>
> I booted a live CD of Ubuntu 11.04 (different from my installed system
> but power drain about the same) and pulled the plug on the AC input to
> the UPS. Everything was at the default settings for the CD, and no
> applications were running. The drain on the battery was 247 W.
>
> The good news is that the battery lasted 9 min 45 sec, a bit longer than
> I thought it would. The bad news is that the battery charge went from
> about 30% to about 0%, according to Ubuntu, in just a few seconds. The
> machine shut down very abruptly, and I don't think it had time to do a
> shutdown sequence. That's why I was booting from a CD. I'm probably
> going to use the gconf-editor to set the shutdown point at 70% of full
> charge in my normal system.
>
> I timed a shutdown sequence with my email and Firefox running. There
> were 5 FF windows and they had 7, 2, 6, 6, 6 tabs open respectively. A
> 16 GB swap file was available but none was in use prior to shutdown
> according to System Monitor. There were no unsaved files open which
> might delay a shutdown by asking questions about saving them. (What
> would happen if they were open?)
>
> The shutdown sequence took 9 seconds to complete, very impressive.
>
> I then tried to do a hibernate. That didn't turn out so well. The system
> spent 30 seconds trying to hibernate, produced some error messages on
> the text screen, then restarted and went back to the login screen on the
> screen saver after about 1 minute. So, it never hibernated at all. For
> now, I have it set to shut down on low battery. I still need to tinker
> with the levels where it shuts down though, as it's probably defaulting
> to 10% charge.
>
> I posted a picture of the error screen which I took with my cellphone.
> If anyone knows what this means, please let me know. It's posted here:
>
> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9879631/hibernate%20error.jpg
Any forgotten mounted USB hard drives?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron
>
>
> On 11/05/2011 09:43 PM, David Tomaschik wrote:
>> Time how long your system takes to shut down and how long it takes to
>> hibernate.  Make sure you do both with the same apps loaded, etc.  I'd
>> be interested to see any hard data.
>>
>> David
>>