[SOLVED] After resume from suspend to RAM, system is slow / unstable

Question

Hello,
I have come across some strangeness when trying to suspend my system.  The
computer is a lenovo U350.  I have read a lot of threads on these subjects,
but I never found one that quite matched the experiences I'm having, so I felt
compelled to make a new post.
Here's what's going on:  I boot into the terminal, and then run pm-suspend.
Within a few seconds, the computer goes to sleep, just as I had hoped.  The
problem is that my computer seems a little groggy when I wake it back up.
Usually, when running a command like ps aux | less, the screen fills up very
quickly.  After I resume from sleep, running ps aux | less is noticeably slow.
It takes a full second (+/- epsilon) to fill the screen.  Other symptoms: if I
suspend / resume in the terminal, and then start a window manager (KDE), the
graphics will be slow and choppy, and when I try to exit the window manager, I
usually end up having to perform the dreaded REISUB after getting stuck on a
blank screen with a non-blinking cursor in the upper left hand corner.
Suspend / resume from KDE will result in either the black, non-responsive
screen as soon as I try to resume, or in the choppy graphics, followed by the
non-responsive black screen when I log out.
I looked at the process list before and after, and noticed that when the
system is first resumed, there are around 50-60 additional kworker processes
running than when I put it to sleep.  I don't know if this is normal or not.
Also, hci0 has been killed, and a new hci0 process has taken its place.  The
same goes for one of the udevd processes.  About 40-50 of the kworker
processes finish after a few minutes, but this does not change the slowness of
ps aux | less, nor does it help with my window manager issues.
I ran a few (not so precise) performance tests before and after doing a
suspend, and got the same results (the test was just to compile some LaTeX,
which took about 4-5 seconds either way).
I examined the pm-suspend.log, and everything looked peachy.  All of the
hooks returned success for the suspend, as well as the resume.  I'm happy to
post this if needed.  I did not change any of the default settings for
pm-suspend.
Anyhow, I've read a lot of threads, and seen a lot of suggestions, e.g.:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=137682
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=136292 (use vbetool?)
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=126174 (suspend tons of modules?)
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=131827 (hpet=disable ?)
However, I'm not that confident in any of them, since no one had quite the
same issue.  I was hoping that someone could point me in the right direction
before I start blindly walking through all the candidate fixes and risk
unleashing chaos into my system.  Many thanks in advance for your help.
Oh, and in case this post was not yet long enough, here is some system
information:
lspci:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 07)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 03)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 03)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M-E LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801IBM/IEM (ICH9M/ICH9M-E) 4 port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 5100 AGN [Shiloh] Network Connection
08:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM57780 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev 01)
lsmod:
Module Size Used by
aes_x86_64 7508 3
cryptd 8309 0
aes_generic 26138 1 aes_x86_64
coretemp 5590 0
cpufreq_ondemand 6164 2
acpi_cpufreq 5877 1
mperf 1275 1 acpi_cpufreq
freq_table 2515 2 acpi_cpufreq,cpufreq_ondemand
arc4 1410 2
joydev 9895 0
snd_hda_codec_hdmi 24121 1
iwlwifi 248196 0
i915 420018 3
snd_hda_codec_conexant 47300 1
uvcvideo 64311 0
mac80211 228527 1 iwlwifi
videodev 82101 1 uvcvideo
snd_hda_intel 23375 0
snd_hda_codec 89389 3 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_conexant,snd_hda_codec_hdmi
broadcom 7270 0
tg3 134884 0
ideapad_laptop 8534 0
snd_hwdep 6389 1 snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm 74780 3 snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_hdmi
snd_page_alloc 7153 2 snd_pcm,snd_hda_intel
snd_timer 19544 1 snd_pcm
snd 59214 7 snd_timer,snd_pcm,snd_hwdep,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_conexant,snd_hda_codec_hdmi
iTCO_wdt 11885 0
v4l2_compat_ioctl32 8316 1 videodev
i2c_i801 8187 0
i2c_algo_bit 5263 1 i915
drm_kms_helper 26137 1 i915
intel_agp 10904 1 i915
btusb 11385 0
cfg80211 172260 2 mac80211,iwlwifi
bluetooth 151999 1 btusb
sparse_keymap 3120 1 ideapad_laptop
soundcore 6210 1 snd
drm 188499 4 drm_kms_helper,i915
rfkill 15498 3 bluetooth,cfg80211,ideapad_laptop
serio_raw 4429 0
iTCO_vendor_support 1961 1 iTCO_wdt
media 10597 2 videodev,uvcvideo
psmouse 61311 0
libphy 16985 2 tg3,broadcom
i2c_core 20492 6 drm,drm_kms_helper,i2c_algo_bit,i2c_i801,videodev,i915
intel_gtt 14519 3 intel_agp,i915
pcspkr 1819 0
evdev 9530 8
thermal 7799 0
wmi 8475 0
battery 6453 0
ac 2344 0
video 11164 1 i915
button 4470 1 i915
processor 25582 3 acpi_cpufreq
ext4 420412 3
crc16 1359 2 ext4,bluetooth
jbd2 71499 1 ext4
mbcache 5881 1 ext4
sd_mod 28307 5
ahci 20037 4
libahci 19559 1 ahci
libata 166654 2 libahci,ahci
scsi_mod 133676 2 libata,sd_mod
uhci_hcd 23116 0
ehci_hcd 40698 0
usbcore 146113 5 ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd,btusb,uvcvideo
usb_common 954 1 usbcore
Last edited by wes (2012-04-06 21:34:43)

Answer 1

I did try reinstalling, actually.  But I did not think to remove the battery and the ram...  I'm very curious now: what is the rationale / intuition for that?  Or is it just that empirical evidence suggests this may be a good idea?
Anyhow, the reinstall by itself did not help.  I tried it out with a pretty bare-bones setup and had the same results.  Here are a few other things I noticed:
- After the suspend, one of the cores is always running at the maximum clock frequency, according to powertop (although, according to ps aux, no one is doing any work).
- Even if I ssh to a nearby machine, I get the same experience when running `ls`.  The screen fills very slowly.  That narrows things down a little bit, but I was already guessing it would be graphics-related.
I have also tried a few random kernel boot parameters after reading things online, but none of those worked, and several stopped the machine from booting at all.
Thanks for your help.