[REGRESSION] [4.11/4.12-rc3] Hang on Suspend to RAM

From: Martin Steigerwald
Date: Thu Jun 01 2017 - 05:52:05 EST


Hello.

I live with that linux kernels since about 2-3 years at least or even longer
occasionally hang on hibernation to disk on this ThinkPad T520 with
Sandybridge. It happens so rarely and if usually leaves me without any easy
way to gather any debug information, that I just put up with it. The hang is
as follows: Power LED of ThinkPad T520 dims on and off like it does during a
hibernation or suspend cycle. Screen is black. And thats it. Sometimes it
eventually completed the process after a few minutes, but usually it is stuck
there for 10 minutes or more and I give up waiting then. Actually maybe even
it was with Nigel CunninghamÂs Tux On Ice when hibernation worked reliably. I
remember uptimes of 100-200 days for some old workstation and even my laptop
back then made 40 days or more. I never see this with any kind of somewhat
recent kernel on my current laptop.

Since 4.11 I have it quite often that a hang like this even happens on suspend
to RAM (standby) as well. And even quite often about 1 time of of 2-3 suspend
attempts. The hang symptoms are similar. Power LED dims on and off. Screen is
black.

Since this is my holidays and this again does not happen all of the time and
thus would be considerable effort to bisect, I think I am out here now. Unless
you have something I can test easily.

It seems I am much better off with opting out out of kernel testing as I tend
to usually get the nasty "I hang and I wonÂt tell you any hint as about why I
do so and do so only sometimes" kind of bugs that are too much effort for me
to provide any usable debug information about.

At least the most nasty i915 bugs in 4.9 and 4.10 seem to be gone meanwhile â
will close my reports about them today. So maybe I look back at 4.11 and 4.12
with ten or more stable releases. Seems current release candidates and even
releases by Linus are just to unstable for me to bear with. Which hints at a
lack of testingâ but then testing for me (and quite some others?) just seems
to be too much of an hassle and effortâ

so draw your own conclusions from there.

I still wanted to provide feedback on these quality issues, as no feedback can
easily be interpreted as "works correctly".

If you have any idea of useful information I can provide to you *easily* and
in a *short amount of time*, then feel free to share it. I have holidays
tough, so I am especially picky about the easily and short amount of time
part.

Switching back to 4.10, last known working kernel, now.

Thanks,
--
Martin