getting ACPI suspend to work (on Dell Inspiron)

[Jonathan Baron]

I've been trying to get "suspend" to work on a Dell Inspiron
9100.  Any of the sleep states will do, for a start.  Here's the
relevant information:

I can blank the screen using
xset dpms force off
(which I have set on a button now)

I followed some instructions for getting ACPI to work on the
Inspiron 8500, which were the best I could find for anything
close: 
http://ltswww.epfl.ch/~dsanta/resources/dell-i8500-linux

This almost works.  I think that the main reason it doesn't
work is the change in the kernel, not the change from the i8500
to the i9100.

Before I did this, Fn-Suspend (function key plus suspend button,
which is on the Esc key) did nothing.  After rebooting, it now
does something.  It blanks the screen for about 10 sec, and then
the screen comes back.

Checking /var/log/acpi yields the following.  I can tell that
some of this really happened, because I was logged in from
another computer and I got cut off, so eth0 really stopped (but
it came back spontaneously after the 10 sec).

The script for the i8500 uses apmd, which is supposedly disabled
(but, as I say, it does something).  I suspect that there is
another way to enter sleep states, to go into /etc/acpi/actions.
(The links at the bottom of
http://acpi.sourceforge.net/documentation/ seem to have a good
discussion of sleep states and other things.)

Suggestions?

-----
[Fri May  7 09:29:43 2004] received event "button/sleep SBTN
00000080 00000006"
[Fri May  7 09:29:43 2004] notifying client 4947[500:500]
[Fri May  7 09:29:43 2004] executing action
"/etc/acpi/actions/suspend button/sleep SBTN 00000080 00000006"
[Fri May  7 09:29:43 2004] BEGIN HANDLER MESSAGES
Shutting down interface eth0:  [  OK  ]
Shutting down loopback interface:  [  OK  ]
 
/dev/hda:
 issuing standby command
 
/dev/hdc:
 issuing standby command
Mounting other filesystems:  [  OK  ]
No APM support in kernel
[Fri May  7 09:29:48 2004] END HANDLER MESSAGES
[Fri May  7 09:29:48 2004] action exited with status 0
[Fri May  7 09:29:48 2004] completed event "button/sleep SBTN
 00000080 00000006"
----

-- 
Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania
Home page:            http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron