suspend/sleep does not work -- just a blinking cursor

[Robert B]

I'm running LMDE/Debian/Gnome.

When trying to do Menu -> Quit -> Suspend or trying to do "sudo pm-suspend", the screen just turns black/blank with a single underscore blinking cursor in the upper left hand corner, and the computer never goes to sleep nor suspends. A hard power shutdown is required.

The machine in question is an Intel Mac Mini.

What's odd is that this worked (with a few quirks) in an old version of Ubuntu (Karmic).

Package: pm-utils
Version: 1.4.1-8
Severity: normal

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (990, 'stable'), (500, 'testing'), (100, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.39-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages pm-utils depends on:
ii powermgmt-base 1.31 Common utils and configs for power

Versions of packages pm-utils recommends:
ii hdparm 9.32-1 tune hard disk parameters for high
ii kbd 1.15.3-4 Linux console font and keytable ut
ii procps 1:3.2.8-10 /proc file system utilities
ii vbetool 1.1-2 run real-mode video BIOS code to a

Versions of packages pm-utils suggests:
ii cpufrequtils 007-1 utilities to deal with the cpufreq
ii ethtool 1:2.6.39-1 display or change Ethernet device
ii radeontool 1.6.1-1 utility to control ATI Radeon back
ii wireless-tools 30~pre9-5 Tools for manipulating Linux Wirel

-- no debconf information

[Spodek (2xwas25-josh-ni1sr89)]

I have the same problem with a lenovo X61. When I suspend, the screen goes to a cursor in the upper left, the power remains on, no suspend, but nothing from the keyboard or mouse does anything. All I can do is press the power button until the machine powers down.

I had the problem with Linux Mint Debian edition. The problem started about a month ago (July 2012).

I installed Linux Mint 13 Maya with Mate 32-bit, same problem. Based on some other pages, I upgraded the kernel to 3.4.0-030400-generic. Didn't change anything.

The same hardware ran LMDE for months without this problem and Ubuntu for years before that without this problem.