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  From: David A. Ranch <dranch@trinnet.net>
  To  : Jont Allen <jba@research.att.com>
  Date: Sun, 07 Nov 1999 11:10:18 -0800

Re: Dell Latitude CP (266Mhz) doesn't suspends in adockingstation

>What you are seeing (system goes into standby rather than
>suspend) is "normal" when some process rejects the suspend.
>There seems to be no way to find out what is doing the rejection
>as it is all controlled from the bios.

Hmmm...ok.


>I am no expert, but I have had lots of experience with many
>different notebooks. I think you will be able to get this to
>work, with some patients. You need to determine what is hanging
>the suspend. Having them as modules is a good idea, as then you
>can be sure they are not causing the problem. 

Thats the thing.  There are (3) devices in the docking station
and I made them all as modules.  It didn't help as I had
hoped.


>Have you tried single user mode (init 1, as described in /etc/inittab)?
>check all the process that are running without the dock, and then 
>with. 

I'll try that though I doubt what would be different.  I usually
use monolithic kernels since I'm a minimallist and I don't
like modules.


>It is not linux that is causing the problem, rather it is
>a driver that is refusing to be shutdown. That driver is launched
>by the docking station, probably by the bios. Each machine is a little
>different in this regard. As I no longer have a docking station,
>I am not sure how much help I will be.

Your email is great help.. :)


>One piece of advice. Forget about the NIC in the docking station
>for not, and use a PCMCIA NIC instead. Just turn off the NIC
>in the doc. See if that is the problem. Also maybe it is a
>hard drive, pcmcia card, IR interface, parallel port, etc.,
>in the dock that is hanging the system. 

I did disable the docking station's NIC (unloaded the module).  
No joy.  


>Try booting under windows (ug) and see if you have the same problem
>there, and if so, get help from the manfct. Once you solve the problem
>there, you will be able to solve it under linux.

Hmmm.. I should do that.  Win98 is still on some partition on it.
I left it there since I'm gonna use VMware for Visio, etc.


>What you are seeing is 'normal' as I said. It is part of the apm spec
>that any device can say "no" to the request for suspend, and convert
>the suspend into a "standby" mode.

I've seen a few emails that there is a new APMd that has a
debug mode.  Would this help me with this issue?  Is this
new version stable?


>Good Luck. I know how much of a pain this type of thing can be.
>But it is a pain under windows too. At least under Linux you have
>some control.

No kidding!  Thanks again for the email.  I'll try this out
tomarrow.

--David
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