Hibernation fails with "not enough free memory" error

[Rüdiger Kupper]

Recently, hibernation on my Thinkpad T61 fails now and again. All goes as usual, with HD-activity clearly indicating that the image is written to the disk. But then the process suddenly stops, and the screen displays:
 PM: not enough free memory
 PM:error -12 creating hibernation image
The computer needs to be forcedly powered off from this state, and boots up without restoring the next time.

My concern is not so much that hibernation fails, but that it leaves the user with no option of recovering from this state. I.e., if hibernation is not possible for whatever reason, I may want to save my work, exit my programs regularly, and shut down the computer. As things are, I have no chance: my session is simply lost.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: pm-utils 1.4.1-7
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-10.46-generic 2.6.38.7
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-10-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Aug 20 23:47:36 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release i386 (20101007)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: pm-utils
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-04-30 (112 days ago)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Pete (p-rosenberg)]

The attached output of cat /proc/meminfo directly before this bug occurs shows, that there is enough memory available to save the whole system memory to the swap partition. Why is the "not enough memory" error displayed in this cases?

[Dirk Bachmann (bacdi)]

I have the same problem on a Lenovo L520 (i5-2520M, 8GB RAM) running Ubuntu 11.10 (Ubuntu 3.0.0-17.30-generic-pae 3.0.22).
The issue seems to occur when memory usage is close to or shortly beyond 4GB.
Instead of hibernating the system remains running with screen locked.
In most cases, I can just unlock, do a suspend/resume cycle and then hibernate the system successfully.

[Dirk Bachmann (bacdi)]

Need to correct my previous comment: problem occurred again this morning with just 2GB of RAM used.
I'm attaching the respective snippet from syslog.
Unlocked the screen and successfully hibernated the system right afterwards.

[Dirk Bachmann (bacdi)]

Here is a more verbose version of the syslog snippet. Error occurs more frequently now - almost every time I try to hibernate the system. Continue using the system after resume seems to lead to sporadic "Bad pagetable" errors.

Side note:
I didn't change my usage pattern: I always use hiberate and almost never shutdown. In the past, I could work this way for weeks, now I'm forced to restart the system almost daily.
I can't remember having seen this issue until about Jan/Feb where I upgraded to kernel 3.0.0-15.
After that, it popped up about once a week. With recent upgrade to kernel 3.0.0-17 it got much worse.

[Catalin Hritcu (catalin-hritcu)]

I get a similar error on a Dell Latitude E6400 after updating to Ubuntu 12.04 with 4G of RAM and a 6GB swap partition (didn't have the problem before the update). My kernel version is 3.2.0-24-generic-pae. I've attached the relevant part of the syslog.

[Dirk Bachmann (bacdi)]

Two weeks ago, I upgraded to 12.04. This broke hibernation completely - the system did freeze with every hibernate attempt and my only choice left was to forcibly power off.
A fresh 12.04 installation (kernel 3.2.0-24-generic-pae) didn't behave any different.
I have not been able to recover any logs as the forced pwer off demolished the file system every time.

In my frustration I removed 4GB of RAM and ran the system with 4GB only.
In this configuration hibernate was functional w/o any problem - tried that 15-20 times in a row.
I'm not sure that my freeze scenario is caused by the problem this bug report is about.

However, I have found a better solution in the meantime: use the 64-bit installation.
This was neither certified nor functional with my Lenovo L520 for the 11.10 release but it works smooth for more than a week now. (for completeness: I'm setting kernel parameters noapic and acpi_osi=\"Linux\" with parameter GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in /etc/default grub).

So, my recommendation: try the amd64 installation, if your processor arch permits this.

[Mauricio Farell Perezgrovas (mfarell)]

I have the same problem on a Dell Inspiron 6400 with 1GB of RAM and 4GB of swap. It will fail the first time I try and succeed the second time...

[dimarick (dimon-ksk)]

I have similar problem on desktop with 8GB RAM, but was no errors with 4GB RAM or when less of 4GB RAM used

[dimarick (dimon-ksk)]

Also with problem reproduced identical on 12.04.1LTS and old 11.04

[peter swain (swine)]

similar problem with 14.04 on dell inspiron 9400

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Rüdiger Kupper, thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu. Natty reached EOL on October 28, 2012.
See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

Is this reproducible in the latest release of Ubuntu via http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ ?

If so, please execute the following via a terminal in order for the necessary debugging information to be attached:
apport-collect 830267

[Rüdiger Kupper (ruediger.kupper)]

I do not use hibernation any longer. It used to fail often and is disabled by default in recent Ubuntu versions.
Please could someone using hibernation with a recent Ubuntu comment on this (Peter? You seem to use it with 14.04)?

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Rüdiger Kupper, this bug report is being closed due to your last comment https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/830267/comments/15 regarding you do not use hibernation. For future reference you can manage the status of your own bugs by clicking on the current status in the yellow line and then choosing a new status in the revealed drop down box. You can learn more about bug statuses at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Status. Thank you again for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please submit any future bugs you may find.

[Pete (p-rosenberg)]

I use 14.04. and haven't experienced the bug any more.

[Danian Achmedzianov (hugefast)]

Ubuntu 14.10 - sometimes this bug does not allow to hibernate the laptop eMachines e732g (2gb RAM)

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Данил, thank you for your comment. So your issue may be dealt with as soon as possible, and so your hardware may be tracked by having necessary debugging information automatically attached, could you please file a new report with Ubuntu by executing the following in a terminal while booted into the default Ubuntu repository kernel via:
ubuntu-bug linux

For more on why this is most helpful, please read the official Ubuntu documentation from the respective Ubuntu developer groups, and triage teams:
Ubuntu Bug Control and Ubuntu Bug Squad: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/BestPractices
Ubuntu Kernel Team: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/KernelTeamBugPolicies
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Policies/DuplicateBugs
Ubuntu Community: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

When opening up the new report, please feel free to subscribe me to it.

As well, please do not announce in this report you created a new bug report.

Thank you for your understanding.