Hibernating causes data loss

[Jessie Morris]

What happens:

Every time my laptop attempts to hibernate on my Lenovo W510, I lose data. I am using home partition encryption (pretty sure this is the cause).

100% of the time, one of the files that becomes unreadable is ~/.kde/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc, however my wallet file and other files have also become broken. The error I get when this happens is

"~/.kde/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc: Input/output error"

I get that error when I try to do anything but rm -rf the broken file.

If I do an ls -l on the file, the output is as follows:

"-rw------- 1 jessie jessie 0 Jun 12 23:38 /home/jessie/.kde/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc"

Notice the file size is 0. The modified date is almost exactly when my laptop last attempted to hibernate.

This happens EVERY time I try to hibernate.

This causes me to lose data, I hate that.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: cryptsetup 2:1.4.1-2ubuntu4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-24.39-generic 3.2.16
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-24-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu8
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Jun 13 09:09:23 2012
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Beta amd64 (20120228.1)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: cryptsetup
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
crypttab:
 # <target name> <source device> <key file> <options>
 cryptswap1 /dev/sda7 /dev/urandom swap,cipher=aes-cbc-essiv:sha256

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Your /etc/crypttab shows that you have random crypted swap configured. It is impossible to resume from hibernate from a random-encrypted swap device because, by definition, the key is not stored anywhere that it can be used for resuming from a cold boot. This is one of many reasons why hibernate is disabled on Ubuntu by default. If Kubuntu is giving you the option to hibernate, that's a bug in the Kubuntu GUI.

If you want to be able to hibernate, you will need to reconfigure your encrypted swap to use a fixed key instead of a random one. This will require you to enter a passphrase at boot (and at resume from hibernate). Use of unencrypted swap with encrypted home directories is strongly discouraged as insecure.

[Jessie Morris (jessieamorris)]

Steve,

That makes sense. I can understand why it would fail to hibernate. I honestly never try to hibernate manually, but KDE tries to do it when my battery gets low. I have recently disabled this and hope to not lose any more data.

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

To fix this, the default power policy for low battery needs to be changed to not be "hibernate".

[Jessie Morris (jessieamorris)]

I've changed the behavior on my machine from hibernate to shut down and I am still getting data loss. This fix is not correct or there is something else at play here.

[Harald Sitter (apachelogger)]

Not a settings bug.