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I have Ubuntu 18.04 installed on my alienware x11m R3 laptop.

The Problem

When my laptop goes to suspend it gets stuck indefinitely and never actually suspends.
The last line I get whne it gets stuck is "Starting Manage, Install and Generate Color Profiles".
This happens both when I choose to suspend from the menu and when I just close the lid and let it suspend by itself.
Here is a picture of my screen when it gets stuck:
Here is a picture of my screen when it gets stuck

What I tried

My laptop has a GeForce GT 540M graphics card. I have seen that sometimes installing the drivers can help. This did not solve the problem for me. I tried both "Using X.org Server" and Using NVIDIA driver metapackage from nvidia-driver-390 (proprietary,tested)" in "Software & Updates"-> "Additional Drivers" but the problem exists in both.

Required Result

I want my computer to enter suspend mode, powering off everything except what is necessary to preserve the state of the machine.

Please let me know if you need me to provide more information.
Thanks in advance for any help available.

Edit with more info

sudo dmidecode -s bios-version result is A04
sudo dmidecode | grep -A3 '^System Information' result is:

System Information
    Manufacturer: Alienware
    Product Name: M11xR3
    Version: A04

free -h result is:

              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           3.8G        2.5G        169M        225M        1.1G        821M
Swap:          2.0G        393M        1.6G
Oha Noch
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  • Thanks for your response! I updated the question with the info you asked. This is a used 10 year old laptop (I think) so it may not appear on Dells website anymore. Since you mentioned free -h I looked in gparted and realized I do not have a swap partition at all, could that be the cause of the problem? It is weird for me that free -h shows I do have swap, while gparted shows I do not have a partition, so maybe I am misunderstanding something? – Oha Noch Jun 12 '20 at 23:55
  • You probably have a swap file not a swap partition. Try ll /swapfile and see what comes up. – WinEunuuchs2Unix Jun 13 '20 at 00:32
  • I also tried it all ... the only thing working right now is using systemctrl suspend - see also https://askubuntu.com/a/1360185/739504 – rémy Aug 26 '21 at 08:58

2 Answers2

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BIOS

Alienware M11xR3

You have BIOS A04.

There's a newer BIOS available, A05, dated June 4, 2020, and can be downloaded from here.

Note: Confirm that I have the correct web page for your model #.

Note: Have good backups before updating the BIOS.

Swap

It sounds like you're using a /swapfile, instead of a swap partition. To confirm it, do:

grep -i swap /etc/fstab

Your /swapfile is too small for only 4G RAM. Let's increase it to 4G.

Note: Incorrect use of the dd command can cause data loss. Suggest copy/paste.

sudo swapoff -a           # turn off swap
sudo rm -i /swapfile      # remove old /swapfile

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1M count=4096


sudo chmod 600 /swapfile  # set proper file protections
sudo mkswap /swapfile     # init /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile     # turn on swap
free -h                   # confirm 4G RAM and 4G swap

Add this line to /etc/fstab, if it's not already there...

/swapfile    none    swap    sw      0   0

Reboot, and verify proper swap operation with free -h.

heynnema
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  • Thank you for your help! Unfortunately it still gets stuck at the same place when suspending. As I only run Linux and the BIOS file is a .exe file I will need to create a bootable USB to update the BIOS, which I do not have available at the moment. I did change my swap file to 4GB as you described. Is there something else I can try doing other than the BIOS update? – Oha Noch Jun 13 '20 at 16:21
  • @OhaNoch The BIOS is the most likely solution to your problem. You can use FreeDOS to make a bootable USB flash drive, and you can do the BIOS update from there. USB flash drives are very inexpensive, if you order them from Amazon/etc. Some BIOS have built-in update procedures, to make the job even easier, but you'll have to check your user/support manuals for that. – heynnema Jun 13 '20 at 16:37
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    Ok. I live in a rural part of Guatemala so I will need to figure out where I can get a USB stick and then I will try updating my BIOS. I will be sure to accept the answer when I get a chance to do that if it works, but it may take some time. Thanks again for your help! – Oha Noch Jun 13 '20 at 16:40
  • I am sorry, due to circumstance I never got to try the BIOS update because I couldn't risk it. This being said I finally ended up being able to format the laptop and that fixed the problem. – Oha Noch Aug 16 '20 at 18:57
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Formatting Ubuntu again solved the problem. There must have been a program installed at some point that jammed something that caused the suspending getting stuck, but I am not sure what it was.

Thanks to Heynemma for his time, unfortunatly due to circumstance I never got to try the BIOS update. I do not know if this would have helped or not.

Oha Noch
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