suspend using APM on a Sony PCG-F350 with FreeBSD 6.1

[Ian Smith]

On Sun, 10 Dec 2006, RJ White wrote:

 > I have a old Sony PCG-F350 laptop running FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE-p11 that
 > I would really like to get suspend (zzz) using APM to work.
 > This is a old laptop (~ 8 years?) and so I can't use ACPI.  From dmesg :
 > 	ACPI disabled by blacklist.  Contact your BIOS vendor.
 > My kernel config only differs from the GENERIC by :
 > 	ident	LAPTOP2
 > 	device	sound
 > 	device	apm			# no longer commented out
 > My /boot/device.hints has :
 > 	hint.apm.0.disabled="0"		# default is 1
 > and I've tried :
 > 	hint.apm.0.flags="0x20"
 > both enabled and commented out.

That looks likely ok.  I suppose you have apm_enable="YES" in rc.conf?

 > In /boot/loader.conf I  have :
 > 	apm_load="YES"

Not needed with device apm in kernel, though it probably won't hurt.

 > I have tried with apmd both running and not running.
 > 'apm -s'  gives 1.
 > dmesg tells me :
 > 	apm0: <APM BIOS> on motherboard
 > 	apm0: found APM BIOS v1.2, connected at v1.2

Looks right.  What does dmesg report with apmd_enable="YES"?

 > I find that APM sorta works - xbatt works for example.  But if I try to
 > suspend (zzz), whether from a xterm under X or not, the display stays the
 > same, keyboard seems unresponsive although I can sometimes switch to a
 > different virtual terminal, but as soon as I attempt to get a response
 > by hitting any keys, I get a constant low beep and I have to kill the power.

So far this behaviour sounds pretty much the same as my Compaq Armada
1500c before adding options SC_NO_SUSPEND_VTYSWITCH to the kernel, or
test it with hw.syscons.sc_no_suspend_vtswitch=1 in /etc/sysctl.conf

 > suspend used to work on this laptop long ago, with a older version of
 > FreeBSD.  Probably 4.4 to 4.8 or so.

Mine's on 5.5-STABLE, but I don't think the APM stuff has changed on 6.

If using USB, you might want to look into kldunload usb in rc.suspend
and corresponding kldload usb in rc.resume, as suggested in those files,
if you get that far ..

Cheers, Ian