Old laptop "goes to sleep" all the time after Linux installation

Question

I’ve installed antiX 19.3 recently on a 16-yro (or older), laptop. One issue I’ve been having is that the thing keeps going to sleep! Every 30-45 seconds or so, it goes into sleep mode; and comes back up on a keypress. This includes even the boot sequence: While running the init scripts for runlevel 5, this already happens once. It continues after my desktop environment (IceWM) has loaded.

I've read this highly related question, and found a workaround: Completely disable ACPI and APM on the grub2 boot line for the kernel: acpi=off apm=off. But that’s not a good solution, because it is important for the laptop to go to sleep when unused; and you want fan speed control etc.

Another suggestion there involve systemd facilities - but my distribution doesn't use systemd.

What else can I do? Also, what could be the cause of this?

Here's the repeating segment of my dmesg:

[Wed May 12 17:11:00 2021] VFS: busy inodes on changed media or resized disk sr0
[Wed May 12 17:11:26 2021] PM: suspend entry (deep)
[Wed May 12 17:11:26 2021] PM: Syncing filesystems ... done.
[Wed May 12 17:11:26 2021] Freezing user space processes ... (elapsed 0.001 seconds) done.
[Wed May 12 17:11:26 2021] OOM killer disabled.
[Wed May 12 17:11:26 2021] Freezing remaining freezable tasks ... (elapsed 0.001 seconds) done.
[Wed May 12 17:11:26 2021] Suspending console(s) (use no_console_suspend to debug)
[Wed May 12 17:11:26 2021] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Synchronizing SCSI cache
[Wed May 12 17:11:26 2021] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Stopping disk
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] ACPI: EC: interrupt blocked
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] ACPI: Preparing to enter system sleep state S3
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] ACPI: EC: event blocked
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] ACPI: EC: EC stopped
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] PM: Saving platform NVS memory
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] Disabling non-boot CPUs ...
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] ACPI: Low-level resume complete
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] ACPI: EC: EC started
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] PM: Restoring platform NVS memory
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] ACPI: Waking up from system sleep state S3
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] ACPI: EC: interrupt unblocked
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] usb usb2: root hub lost power or was reset
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] usb usb3: root hub lost power or was reset
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] usb usb4: root hub lost power or was reset
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] 8139too 0000:01:00.0 eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0xC5E1
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Starting disk
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] ACPI: EC: event unblocked
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] ata1.00: ACPI cmd ef/03:0c:00:00:00:a0 (SET FEATURES) filtered out
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] ata1.00: ACPI cmd ef/03:45:00:00:00:a0 (SET FEATURES) filtered out
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] ata2.00: ACPI cmd ef/03:0c:00:00:00:a0 (SET FEATURES) filtered out
[Wed May 12 17:11:28 2021] ata2.00: ACPI cmd ef/03:42:00:00:00:a0 (SET FEATURES) filtered out
[Wed May 12 17:11:29 2021] usb 3-2: reset full-speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd
[Wed May 12 17:11:29 2021] firewire_core 0000:01:02.0: rediscovered device fw0
[Wed May 12 17:11:30 2021] OOM killer enabled.
[Wed May 12 17:11:30 2021] Restarting tasks ... done.
[Wed May 12 17:11:30 2021] PM: suspend exit
[Wed May 12 17:11:35 2021] VFS: busy inodes on changed media or resized disk sr0
[Wed May 12 17:12:01 2021] PM: suspend entry (deep)

Notes:

• I should mention that this did not happen with the Windows XP installation which the laptop used to have.
• The laptop’s battery is almost dead, so I only run it with mains power plugged in.
• I tried switching the kernel version from 4.9.something to 4.19.something (antix-packaged images); no effect.
• Laptop info: Clevo M3CW, Pentium M 1.6GHz, 1 GB memory, 40GB HDD. Has a built-in CD which is giving me another kind of trouble that's probably unrelated.

Answer 1

Do the following:

• As root, edit your /etc/elogind/logind.conf.

• Set the option HandleLidSwitch in the [Login] section to:

  HandleLidSwitch=ignore
  

  (note: no # comment at the start of the line!)

• Reboot your machine

This worked for me. If it doesn't work for you, try ignoring some other ACPI signals. Apparently old laptops fire such signals in a quirky way or such that the Linux kernel misinterprets them.

Answer 2

One of my laptops occasionally shows the same "hiccup" which seems to be caused by a stuck (or misinterpreted) laptop lid switch, particularly after it stood idle with open lid and went to suspend after the set timeout.

Now when I wake up the machine with the power key, it immediately suspends again after 30 seconds. However if I close and open the lid, the system wakes up and all is well.

If this does not help, you may try to change the system's reaction to power switches and the lid switch. Many modern linuxes run systemd as the init process. Its systemd-logind.service is configured via /etc/logind.conf:

• HoldoffTimeoutSec= is the initial timeframe after boot during which the lid switch is ignored. It defaults to 30 seconds.
• HandleLidSwitch= can be set to ignore if the lid switch is a general issue and should be ignored.
• HandleLidSwitchExternalPower=, HandleLidSwitchDocked= can be set to define separate lid switch actions when the laptop is on its power adaptor, or when the laptop is docked or external display is connected.

See the manual page for more details.