Suspend/Resume problem in Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 running on MacBook Pro 5.1

9 Comments Published November 20th, 2009 in Apple, Errors, Hardware, Linux Tags: Hardware, Karmic, Linux, MacBook, Resume, Suspend, Ubuntu.

I updated today from Jaunty to Karmic and, as effect, I had Suspend/Resume/Hibernate broken. But reboot and shutdown works; before with Jaunty the reboot was frequently crashing.

To fix the Suspend/Resume, I modified /boot/grub/menu.lst to add the kernel option acpi=noirq

Example:

title		Ubuntu 9.10, kernel 2.6.31-14-generic
uuid		5daec709-2655-4d7c-9968-969143e31fbd
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic root=UUID=5daec709-2655-4d7c-9968-969143e31fbd ro quiet splash acpi=noirq
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic
quiet

Other problem I found during the distro upgrade:

sound is now working without needing to compile a patched alsa driver. But it made me crazy to make headphone work. The audio settings are now simplified, and that is a good thing, but they are hiding options needed to make things work. Hint: install gnome-alsamixer and unmute headphones.
infrared remote control stopped working. I have to investigate further on this.

For now I notice that Nvidia GPU temperature looks lower now, but I still use mfc-daemon to automatically adapt fan speed to CPU temperature; but sometime it stops working and if you are not at the computer it may be risky (today I almost burned it while watching a video running in novell moonlight, which turns your laptop in a oven)

Sound works much better, it seems that the problem of the applications locking the sound resource exclusively is gone, or reduced. So now running vlc and a youtube video works fine. In the sound preferences now you can see the applications that are using the audio device:

Karmic Sound

Finally!

9 Responses to “Suspend/Resume problem in Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 running on MacBook Pro 5.1”

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1 lubuntu Dec 3rd, 2009 at 12:58

I tried your suggestion on a Macbook pro 4,1 but it didn’t resolve my suspend problem. What I did see is that the mouse cursor responds very delayed on the the USB-connected mightmouse. When moving the cursor via the mouse pad, it responds normally. This must be related to switching off the acpi irq somehow.
2 clata Dec 13th, 2009 at 19:10

I tried your tip too but it didn’t work for me…
Anyway the following workaround fixed the issue in a quite elegant way for now.

After resuming your computer, if the speaker-phones sound went away and only the headphones keep working, try the following from the command line to restore full functionalities to your sound system:

$ sudo alsa force-reload

ciao.
3 Alan Mamand Dec 30th, 2009 at 12:36

I have the same suspend problem, with Ubuntu 9.10, the problem occurred when I upgraded my video card from an on-board Siemens Fujutsu motherboard video card which I thik was intel, to a VGI Nevidia vidio card 512 DDR2 Ram.
4 Pete Ashdown Jan 1st, 2010 at 19:20

You should make this change in /etc/default/grub under grub2.
5 Luigi Jan 2nd, 2010 at 18:31

Hi Pete, in Ubuntu, that file does not exists. The grub configuration is located in /boot/grub/*
6 bob Feb 4th, 2010 at 14:58

If you install a fresh copy of Ubuntu 9.10 you get Grub2 installed.

There is no /boot/grub/menu.lst for grub2.

There is a file /boot/grub/grub.cfg but you are not supposed to edit it, instead it tells you to edit /etc/default/grub but if you open up this there is very little to edit.

First they get rid of xorg.conf, then they get rid of menu.lst. Are they trying to make Linux harder to get working properly than it already is?

Also, why did they include grub2 in the latest Ubuntu? It’s obviously still in beta phase. The grub recovery console simply does not work under grub2. None of the documented commands work. Poor show.

It’s very disappointing to install Ubuntu onto your laptop to find that resuming from suspend STILL does not work, and when you go out of your way to try and fix it you suddenly find that non of the fixes suggested don’t apply to your “updated” software.

Looks like it’s back to Windows, again.
7 Luigi Feb 4th, 2010 at 23:12

Hi Bob.

Sorry to hear that. I upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10.

BTW, before going back to Windows, try also this:
http://en.newinstance.it/2009/11/25/suspendresume-in-karmic-2/

Best luck.
L.
8 bLax Feb 8th, 2010 at 05:22

Ciao! sono capitato qui per caso: vista la “recensione” e avendo lo stesso macbook, volevo sapere se esiste il modo di usare la scheda grafica 9400 al posto della 9600….

tnx
9 dC May 16th, 2010 at 09:27

I had a problem with suspend initially, after installing Ubuntu Lucid 10.04, not to talk about Grub2 problems with dual-booting OS X. This made my Macbook Pro 5.3 fail completely, the keyboard freezing, the mouse as well, the WLAN driver being kicked out totally:

“To fix the Suspend/Resume, I modified /boot/grub/menu.lst to add the kernel option acpi=noirq”

I did add this to the grub defaults, made a update-grub and then could not access the machine anymore. The only solution is to start the LiveCD, mount the drive, change the /boot/grub/grub.cfg settings by erasing acpi=noirq, boot into the system again, delete it also from the /etc/default/grub file and run a new update-grub. After setting up all the MacTel modules and packages, everything was working fine. So, plain installation of Lucid, update all drivers, do as described on the Ubuntu Macbook Community pages, and do not, I repeat, do not add:

acpi=noirq

at least not to a Macbook Pro 5.3.

good luck!
D.