pm-suspend

Suspend system to RAM

TLDR

Suspend to RAM (S3)

$ sudo pm-suspend

Turn display on after resume if it stays blank

$ sudo pm-suspend --quirk-dpms-on

Re-POST the video BIOS on resume

$ sudo pm-suspend --quirk-vbe-post

Save/restore PCI config for the VGA card

$ sudo pm-suspend --quirk-save-pci

Persist quirks that worked to the last-known-working DB

$ sudo pm-suspend --store-quirks-as-lkw

SYNOPSIS

pm-suspend [--quirk-*] [--store-quirks-as-lkw] [--help]

pm-suspend puts the machine into ACPI S3 (suspend-to-RAM). Most devices are powered off, but system state is preserved in RAM, allowing near-instant resume at the cost of continuous (small) power draw. Typical laptops can maintain S3 for one to three days on battery.pm-suspend is part of pm-utils. It runs hook scripts in `/etc/pm/sleep.d/` and `/usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/` before sleeping and again on resume. Hooks receive `suspend`/`resume` (or `hibernate`/`thaw`) as their first argument:

$ #!/bin/sh
case "$1" in
suspend|hibernate) : # before sleep ;;
resume|thaw) : # after wake ;;
esac

Video hardware is the most common source of resume failures; the `--quirk-*` flags apply well-known workarounds. Use `pm-suspend --auto-quirks` (when supplied by the distribution) or combine `--store-quirks-as-lkw` with the quirks that fix your machine to make them persistent.

PARAMETERS

--quirk-dpms-on

Use DPMS to turn the display on after resume if it remains blank.

--quirk-dpms-suspend

Use DPMS to switch the display off before suspending.

--quirk-radeon-off

Disable Radeon display before suspend, re-enable on resume (legacy ThinkPads).

--quirk-s3-bios

Call the video BIOS during S3 resume.

--quirk-s3-mode

Set the video card to VGA text mode, then call the BIOS on resume.

--quirk-vbe-post

Re-POST the video card via the VESA BIOS on resume.

--quirk-vbemode-restore

Save and restore the VESA mode across suspend to prevent X corruption.

--quirk-vbestate-restore

Save and restore low-level video state around suspend.

--quirk-vga-mode-3

Force VGA text mode 3 on resume.

--quirk-save-pci

Save and restore the PCI configuration space of the VGA card.

--store-quirks-as-lkw

If the invocation succeeds, write the quirks used to `/var/cache/pm-utils/lastknownworking.quirkdb` so they are applied automatically next time.

--help

Show help.

CAVEATS

Deprecated on systemd-based distributions; prefer systemctl suspend (which uses systemd-logind and systemd-sleep). Requires root and a working ACPI/kernel suspend path. The right set of `--quirk-*` flags is hardware-specific; try them one at a time when troubleshooting black screens on resume.

HISTORY

pm-utils was developed by Richard Hughes, Peter Jones, and the Fedora/openSUSE power-management teams in the late 2000s as a replacement for the older `hal`-based scripts. It became the standard suspend/hibernate frontend on most Linux distributions until superseded by systemd-logind and systemd-sleep around 2012-2015.