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I'm trying to fix a strange suspend problem on Xubuntu 19.10. I was recently advised to test if this was a Xubuntu-only issue by trying the Live Disks for others OSs to see if the problem persisted there. In what turned out to be a smart move, I first tried the same Live Disk that Xubuntu 19.10 OS was installed from (in this case, a USB stick). To my surprise, the suspend issue exists on the installed OS but not the Live Disk.

How could this happen? To my knowledge, I've made no relevant changed to Xubuntu's settings - after all, I've had this problem since installing - and aside from not having mounted the SSD that holds the Xubuntu installation, I know of almost nothing that would be used by the Live Disk in a way different to that of the real installation. My only guesses are as follows:

1) Some Xubuntu update that my real installation has that my Live Disk does not is causing the problem.

2) There is some issue with my SSD. As suggested by Raffa, I have placed my dmesg | grep -i acpi output here. Apparently [ 0.259633] PCI: Using host bridge windows from ACPI; if necessary, use "pci=nocrs" and report a bug and [ 1.045638] acpi PNP0C14:02: duplicate WMI GUID 05901221-D566-11D1-B2F0-00A0C9062910 (first instance was on PNP0C14:01) are cause for concern, but I do not know how to address them.

Are there any other alternatives? Where can I investigate the possibilities?

Note: This question isn't for solving the suspend problem - that would be a near duplicate of the linked question. My interest here is specifically in how I can have a problem on an installation that is not on its Live Disk.

J. Mini
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  • Most of us make minor adjustments to our installed systems we don't bother with on a 'live' system, and rarely fully consider the effects. Having issues on an installed system (assuming it wasn't just a fresh install minutes earlier) and not in a 'live' system is in my experience rather common. Having no problems on a 'live' system and and freshly installed (ie. first boot of installed system) also do occur, but these are common tests in diagnosing problems anyway as there are differences with 'live' and 'installed'. This is vague as I'm mostly a tester & not a dev – guiverc Mar 17 '20 at 23:17
  • Are you using Nvidia drivers, or any other non-free, third party drivers? These are frequently the cause of suspend problems and they are generally not loaded in Live sessions. – Kurankat Mar 17 '20 at 23:41
  • @Kurankat See the linked question. I'm not using any NVDIA or nouveas drivers. – J. Mini Mar 17 '20 at 23:48
  • It could be very much an ACPI issue and could be worsened by connecting some hardware like the SSD. Please run dmesg | grep -i acpi to check and refer to this answer for more info. – Raffa Mar 20 '20 at 15:54
  • @Raffa I'm not seeing anything that stands out. In fact, the output seems quite short. I'll edit this in to my question soon, but is there some particularly place that I should be asking about this output? https://pastebin.com/WqdgDmpE – J. Mini Mar 20 '20 at 18:55
  • @Raffa Is the [ 0.259633] PCI: Using host bridge windows from ACPI; if necessary, use "pci=nocrs" and report a bug line concerning? – J. Mini Mar 20 '20 at 19:42
  • As I thought ACPI issue and your computer was manufactured for Windows :) Please read acpi PNP0C14:02: duplicate WMI GUID 05901221-D566-11D1-B2F0-00A0C9062910 (first instance was on PNP0C14:01) and PCI: Using host bridge windows from ACPI; if necessary, use "pci=nocrs" and report a bug both present in your dmesg | grep -i acpi – Raffa Mar 20 '20 at 19:47
  • Does your machine have dual graphics cards? as this as well could worsen the issue – Raffa Mar 20 '20 at 19:51
  • What you can do is to experiment with the hardware ie. the SSD and change graphics drivers to open source or proprietary until the machine is stable. Also Upgrade to the next release of Ubuntu that comes next month as it might provide better support for your machines ACPI. Updating BIOS is advised as well if the manufacturer provides it. Best of luck – Raffa Mar 20 '20 at 20:00
  • Actually the WMI message is the most important one. Further reading what is WMI? – Raffa Mar 20 '20 at 20:38
  • @Raffa Thanks, I'll look in to those. As for graphics cards, I don't have any unless you're counting whatever integrated stuff my processor gives me. My BIOS is up to date. – J. Mini Mar 20 '20 at 20:52
  • @Raffa None of those WMI links look like a fix. I'll dig deeper, but I'm fearing that there won't be a known solution. However, seeing as this seems to be the right direction, you may want to move this out of the comments and post it as an answer here – J. Mini Mar 20 '20 at 20:56

1 Answers1

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Looking Into your dmesg | grep -i acpi output I can see what suggests that this is an ACPI issue. In particular, this:

[    1.045638] acpi PNP0C14:02: duplicate WMI GUID 05901221-D566-11D1-B2F0-00A0C9062910 (first instance was on PNP0C14:01)
[    1.045676] acpi PNP0C14:03: duplicate WMI GUID 05901221-D566-11D1-B2F0-00A0C9062910 (first instance was on PNP0C14:01)

WMI:

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is a complex set of proprietary extensions to the Windows Driver Model that provides an OS interface to allow instrumented components to provide information and notifications.

This actually means that your machine was originally manufactured for Windows OS and although Ubuntu and other Linux distributions will mimic the Windows OS calls to the BIOS using different mechanisms amoung which WMI, there are times when this transaction is unsuccessful on ether ends and such issues happen.

The issues caused by this can range from just suspend issues to WiFi, Ethernet, battery, hard drives, SSDs and others.

Some of these issues appear with certain Linux kernels and disappear with others. They might differ but, are unlikely to disappear completely until the communication between system BIOS and the kernel is fixed. The ideal fix is a BIOS update from the manufacturer that addresses this issue.

What you can do besides that is to experiment with the hardware ie. the SSD and change the graphics drivers to open source or proprietary until the machine is stable. Also Upgrade to the next release of Ubuntu that comes next month as it might provide better support for your machines BIOS.

Raffa
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