Ubuntu Server Continuously "goes to sleep"

Question

I am running a web server at home using Ubuntu 11.4 (maybe? I can't 100% recall) on an older AMD 2400+ desktop with 1 or 2 GB of RAM. Sorry I can't recall the details 100%.

Anyway, I have a KVM hooked up to a monitor and PS2 keyboard that I use to switch between the server and my iMac (The keyboard is only hooked up so I can switch between the two easily. Many times a week, Pingdom will tell me the server is down and I can't hit the server. When I get home (it rarely happens when I am home), I hit the Ctrl key twice to switch to the server, hit the space bar and everything is now up and running again. I need to look again, but I don't believe there is any power saving features turned on in the BIOS.

Does anyone have any other suggestions of what I may have going on? I have my uncle's website running on it now and I really would like to have a better up-time than 95%

As a note, I do not have any GUI installed so everything has to be done on the console (or through WebMin) and I know my way around, but I am by no means experienced.

Does anything appear in system logs (files under `/var/log`)? — Gilles 'SO- stop being evil', Nov 22 '11 at 23:34
I don't know, look for log entries in any file (probably `kern.log`, but possibly others) created around the time the computer went to sleep. — Gilles 'SO- stop being evil', Nov 23 '11 at 08:28

score 21 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 07 '15 at 08:57

21

Add the kernel options acpi=off apm=off to the contents of GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in file /etc/default/grub

Then run sudo update-grub

Finally reboot your computer.

edited Apr 07 '15 at 08:57

ndemou

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answered Nov 22 '11 at 19:29

jamesallman

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Nope, I'll try that. – Mike Wills Nov 22 '11 at 20:10
Well... I made the change. Only time will tell if it works. – Mike Wills Nov 23 '11 at 04:04
I need to figure out why yet, but the server just "went down" again. – Mike Wills Nov 23 '11 at 16:31
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Those kernel options should have completely disabled automatic power management. Did you rebuild grub with the `update-grub` command? – jamesallman Nov 23 '11 at 16:35
Nope... I was wondering if there was a step two. :-( – Mike Wills Nov 23 '11 at 16:58
And step three would be to reboot with the new kernel configuration... ;) You can verify the options are active with a `cat /proc/cmdline` – jamesallman Nov 23 '11 at 17:02
Okay... ran `update-grub' and rebooted and confirmed it's active. Try again... – Mike Wills Nov 23 '11 at 18:08
This seemed to have resolved my problems. I am waiting it out a couple weeks before marking this as the answer. – Mike Wills Nov 28 '11 at 15:29
No downtime after a week. I am guessing this was the answer. – Mike Wills Dec 01 '11 at 22:20
This worked to prevent a Debian standard install from sleeping when closing a laptop lid, although it also prevented the screen resolution from switching to the native. Luckily I just SSH in, so no problems there. – alanaktion May 03 '15 at 05:22
This prevented my Ubuntu 14 server from booting. It complain about things like "failed to obtain physical IRQ 9" when doing ehci-pci initialization. – Andrew Bainbridge Jan 07 '16 at 12:09
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This caused USB devices to stop working with Ubuntu Server 14.04.3. – Andrew Mairose Jan 21 '16 at 17:01

score 17 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 09 '16 at 00:50

On Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, I successfully used the following to disable suspend:

sudo systemctl mask sleep.target suspend.target hibernate.target hybrid-sleep.target

And this to re-enable it:

sudo systemctl unmask sleep.target suspend.target hibernate.target hybrid-sleep.target

score 6 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 04 '15 at 14:35

Add the kernel options acpi=off apm=off to the contents of GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in file /etc/default/grub

Then run sudo update-grub

Finally reboot your computer.

According to https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Bootoptionen its a bad idea to turn off acpi complete as it may cause overheating because of turning off fan control.

This is a very old question. Just for other people who may have similar issue check /etc/systemd/logind.conf if it fits to the configuration you need. It may be that IdleActionSec is set to an unusual high value and IdleAction is set to suspend.

score -1 · Answer 4 · edited Feb 01 '13 at 12:37

-1

Add this to the end of your kernel parms in /boot/grub/grub.conf:

consoleblank=0

edited Feb 01 '13 at 12:37

rahmu

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answered Feb 01 '13 at 11:59

helper

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Ubuntu Server Continuously "goes to sleep"

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