Unable to wake up from suspend

[xavi92]

Hi fellow PinePhone users,

I am using this shell script to handle cyclical suspend:

https://gitea.privatedns.org/xavi/pineph.../sleepwalk

However, a few times a day my phone fails to wake up from suspend, forcing a hard reboot. Failing to wake up usually means either:

- The screen remains black (and no backlight is shown). When this happens, the A64 runs particularly hot.
- The screen turns on, but the system is completely unresponsive (might be able to do *something*, but it is then unable to load any program, file, etc. until it freezes completely).
- The phone reboots itself.

This is a serious stability issue that is affecting my phone at random times, and it never happens when suspend is disabled (for example, when the phone is charging). Because of this issue, it is very hard to get >1 day uptime, and sometimes not even >6 hour.

However, I have no clue at how to debug this issue, or whether other people are having it, too.

Any pointers?

Best regards,
Xavi

[alaraajavamma]

Any pointers?

Best regards,
Xavi

My answer is not going to solve your problem but maybe give some hint

This is not issue at all with Manjaro or Arch - I can easily have 30 days uptimes.
With recent postmarkerOS edge I can reach now like 7 days or so and then it fails - so not big issue but exists.
I have not tried mobian in a while but when I did it was the same experience as yours - maybe 12 hours max

[xavi92]

Thanks for your answer. I am surprised the distro choice makes so much of a difference in regards to uptime. Were you able to spot what caused pmOS and Mobian not to reach 30-day uptimes? Were you using suspend in all of them?

[alaraajavamma]

Thanks for your answer. I am surprised the distro choice makes so much of a difference in regards to uptime. Were you able to spot what caused pmOS and Mobian not to reach 30-day uptimes? Were you using suspend in all of them?

Yes my suspend timer is all ways 1 minute for obivious reasons.

I have been trying to find reasons, but unfortunately I have no idea what is causing this.
I am also in a special position because I actually maintain the PP for several people so my focus is not on just one device or one user - so as "a test user" I am super expert - I still don't understand much. All the phones are used as a phone - so what I write below is related to this.

What do I think it is caused by? This is not true - not trying to be good answer - just my own guess.
Phosh/Gnome/Mobian mobile is evolving so fast (thanks purism and volunteers!) and I think so called 'stable' distros can't handle it.
Almost every month someone discovers some crucial bug (it is fixed really fast - I don't know how fast the fix will arrive to "stable distros" today but imo too late)

IMO (not true but this is how I feel) today linux mobile is in prime condition with edge/unstable distros because there are so many crucial issues what are all ready being fixed but not yet accepted for Debian/mobian.

As said I don't understand much so please shoot me down if this is not true!

[jsch]

The "main" part of that sleep/freeze and wake-up is handled by the Linux kernel. The kernel is the part where most distributions differ.
You can find a few details regarding the kernel differences on https://blog.mobian.org/posts/2023/09/30...t-dilemma/

[xavi92]

A couple of weeks ago, I did an upgrade and this seems to have fixed the issue once and for all. Since then, I no longer had sudden reboots or lockups (keeps fingers crossed). According to /var/log/apt/history.log, linux-image-6.1-sunxi64:arm64 was upgraded from 6.1.37+sunxi64-1 to 6.1.52+sunxi64-1, but I am not sure whether the kernel upgrade was the actual solution to this issue.

[dchang0]

OP:

What modem firmware version are you running?

I very recently tried Mobian for the first time, after first trying several other OSes including Arch, factory SailfishOS, factory Manjaro, and one other that escapes me. Right after installing Mobian (and running all updates) I instantly ran into the issue of Mobian on my PPP going into suspend and not coming back out, the screen stayed black, I could hear the volume go up and down when pressing the volume keys, and the phone started to get hot and consume a ton of battery.

On a whim (after studying the firmware upgrade of a Quectel RM520N-GLAA modem), I tried upgrading the PPP's Quectel modem firmware to the latest version to see if it would help, and sure enough, the suspend/unsuspend seems to be working properly now. I followed the official PinePhone Pro modem firmware upgrade procedure as described here: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_P...k_firmware

It was very, very risky to do so, though, because of the suspend problem. I made sure to turn off anything that could suspend the phone and also any auto-sleep, auto-dimming and auto-brightness. I also kept touching the screen to make sure it would stay awake, and obviously I had to avoid touching the power button.

The firmware update completed, I rebooted, and then the suspend/unsuspend started working as expected immediately. I then set the auto-dim and auto-sleep back to default settings and let the phone fall asleep on its own overnight without being attached to a charger, then checked it in the morning. It woke immediately in the morning.

I have not tested the camera's unsuspend yet, but if that doesn't work, it's not as big a deal as the whole phone not coming out of suspend.

I jumped from modem firmware version ending in _01.001.01.001 (probably the first stock firmware version ever released) to EG25GGBR07A08M2G_30.006.30.006.