Dell D820 ACPI suspend to RAM "just works", but can't understand why! Gnome-power-manager does not

[Paul Johnson]

I had a Dell D800 with Nvidia 5200FX and I had to wrestle and fight
with it to get suspend to RAM working.  It turned out that a properly
written ACPI script in /etc/acpi/actions and turning off the kernel's
agp support did the job.  To suspend, it ONLY works to do the
FN-Suspend key.  None of the scripts provided for suspending
worked--the system or video would not wake up.  That includes
acpitools, pm-utils, hibernate, and gnome-power-manager (can't tell
what it was trying to do to suspend).  pm-utils assumes

Now I have a new D820 (Nvidia quadro card) with a fresh install of FC5
(and the Nvidia driver), and there is no ACPI script at all. I hit
FN-Suspend and the system suspends, and I hit the power button or open
and close the lid, andit wakes up! No fuss, no fight.

On the other hand, if I use the Gnome menu where it says "suspend",
the system goes to sleep, but never wakes up.  It appears not to awake
the kernel, or lock right away. It is not the "video does not wake up"
problem that plagued me on the D800.

After all the wrestling with the D800, understand that there are many
different suspend scripts and not all are written for any particular
video card.  But I do not understand

1. Why does FN-Suspend work without any configuration in /etc/acpi

2. What is Gnome doing to try to suspend and how can I make it work
like FN-Suspend.


--
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas