laptop will not sleep after idle time

[Khashayar Naderehvandi]

When my laptop is on mains it sleeps in accordance with gnome-power-manager's settings. That is, if I've set it to sleep after 20 minutes of inactivity, it does precisely that. However, while on battery power this does not happen. The screen is blanked, but the computer never goes into suspend. The weird thing is that the screensaver never kicks in (instead the screen goes blank whether gpm is running or not), so this might actually be a problem with gnome-screensaver. I'm not sure.

For testing purposes I set gnome-screensaver to activate the screensaver after 1 minute of inactivity, and gpm to suspend the computer after 2 minutes of inactivity. I will attach the output of

LC_ALL="en_US.utf8" gnome-power-manager --no-daemon --debug power --verbose & sleep 4m && killall gnome-power-manager && gnome-screensaver-command -p

Please do tell me if and how I can provide additional information. This bug is really annoying as it has resulted in me returning to my laptop several times only to find it completely drained on battery.

I'm currently on an up-to-date hardy install.

WORKAROUND:
Looking through gconf, I saw that /apps/gnome-power-manager/actions/sleep_type_battery is set to 'nothing' instead of 'suspend'. Setting it to suspend caused the computer to sleep after 2 minutes idle.

[Khashayar Naderehvandi (khashayar)]

By the way, just realized this might be a duplicate of bug #55581, which is marked invalid due to lack of information.

[Miguel Ruiz (mruiz)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. I'm using Hardy Heron up to date and I cannot reproduce this problem (my system sleeps without problem). Would you test it again using the last version of Hardy?

Thanks again and we appreciate your help.

Cheers!

[Khashayar Naderehvandi (khashayar)]

Just tried, still seeing the problem. It might be related to another bug though (bug 194052), which causes the profiling not to work for me. However, I have use_profile_time set to false, as well as set_time_for_policy, so it shouldn't matter.

I'm not sure how to further give more information.

[nynexman4464 (alex-alexrock)]

Sorry, I didn't actually mean to hit that button (that set it as a bug in gnome-power). I do believe that I'm experiencing this problem as well, however. When on AC the computer will sleep after 2 minutes, but on battery it never sleeps. Looking through gconf, I saw that /apps/gnome-power-manager/actions/sleep_type_battery is set to 'nothing' instead of 'suspend'. Setting it to suspend caused the computer to sleep after 2 minutes idle. I'm not sure why it doesn't get set to suspend when you change the time on the slider in gnome-power-manager, as you would expect.

[Khashayar Naderehvandi (khashayar)]

Yes! Exactly.

/apps/gnome-power-manager/actions/sleep_type_battery is set to 'nothing' whereas
/apps/gnome-power-manager/actions/sleep_type_ac 'suspend'.

This is very strange, and changing the first key to 'suspend' fixes this bug for me.

Obviously, there's something wrong with the gconf schema. Now, if we could just get the attention of the package maintainer, this could be fixed pretty quickly...

[mlaverdiere (mlaverdiere)]

I'm on a Compaq Presario V2610CA laptop with Ubuntu Hardy (Beta) and I'm experiencing the same problem, i.e. idle time is not respected for suspend/hibernate. The problem was also ocuring with Gutsy. I've looked in /apps/gnome-power-manager/actions/ and everything was right, i.e. set to "suspend", as I set it in the gnome-power-manager applet.

One interesting thing to note is that when I was using Kubuntu Gutsy (some weeks ago - I'm a switcher!) things were working right, i.e. idle time set for suspend in the KDE power manager utility was respected. So it could be a Gnome problem...

[mlaverdiere (mlaverdiere)]

I've found that idle time for suspending set in gnome-power-manager (GPM) is respected in my case if I don't close the laptop cover (lid). Closing the lid makes my screen blank (whether or not I set "blank the screen" in GPM), but nothing else.

[Adam Fabian (awfabian)]

I have a Dell Inspiron 1420N running Hardy with the security and and recommended
repositories enabled, with those packages installed (Up to 26 June 2008).

My computer is able to suspend and hibernate when I do it manually. When I use
gnome-power-preferences, and set the time to put the computer to sleep when
 inactive, the computer does not sleep after that amount of time has elapsed.
Some kind of event does seem to be generated, but the computer does not sleep.

Attached is output from gnome-power-manager run as --verbose --no-daemon (the
text of this bug report is included at the top) and left until the "inactive"
timeout (after killing the normally running instance of gnome-power-manager.)

Incidentally, "sleep" and "inactive" are both ambiguous. When is the computer
"inactive?" Is "sleep" suspend or hibernate? But I should probably use a
separate bug report for ambiguous wording.

[Adam Fabian (awfabian)]

I have gotten my computer to sleep after the appropriate amount of time. I do not know how to re-create the original failure to sleep at this time.

I went to the screensaver options, slid the screensaver time around, and clicked the power management button from screensaver, and noted that the gnome power management settings set new minimums at the time I set for the screen-saver, and then it started working.

I may have had the screensaver off, so perhaps this behavior only occurs when the screensaver is completely disabled. At any rate, I will probably not try to investigate to reproduce the issue.

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

Thanks for reporting this bug and any supporting documentation. Since this bug has enough information provided for a developer to begin work, I'm going to mark it as confirmed and let them handle it from here. Thanks for taking the time to make Ubuntu better!

Adding the WorkAround to the Description.

[David Chen (david.chen)]

This issue is also in Jaunty.

[DAMel (dynych)]

The same problem is in Karmic.

[Craig Harding (craigwharding)]

Any status on this bug?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for gnome-power-manager (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]