Question Frequent hibernation (not under windows)

[chyady]

Hi everyone,

I have an old laptop (Sony VGN-BZ13XN) which I am trying to recycle for a small DIY project in linux.
I have a usb drive with ubuntu-24.04-live-server-amd64 on it, well formatted using Rufus. During install, my laptop regularly went into sleep...
One press on a key and it wakes up again and continues install as if nothing happened.
Once install was done, I am in my command line and I can check out the install, it all seems good, but every once in a while (usually around a minute), it goes back to sleep.

Note: I changed the hardrive with a SSD, I removed the battery to test and I am directly plugged on the wall, I changed the CMOS battery to a new one (and measured 3V correctly), I removed one of the two RAM and switched them, and also tried with an external monitor with lid open/closed, or fully open to check if there was a wiring issue on that side.

Laptop isnt hot (and the hibernation sometimes happened within seconds during install, so i dont think it even had time to be hot enough to be an issue).

Any idea of what could be the cause ?

I only have two options left to try : a new SSD, and a new power supply... but not too sure if that would do anything here.
so if you have any ideas, please let me know !

Thanks in advance

 

[COLGeek]

Have you looked at the power settings in the BIOS itself to see if any non-default settings are causing this behavior?

 

[chyady]

these are my bios settings... nothing weird :/ see here :

https://imgur.com/a/dVLpw4M

View: https://imgur.com/a/dVLpw4M



i can also see after login that temperature (as per linux) is 41 degrees, doesnt look too high to me.
so before i buy another SSD or power supply, can any of these be the reason or no way it can lead to a looping hibernation ?
or any other ideas ?

(note: i also checked points here, and nothing in my bios about these : https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/bios-beginners,1126-8.html)

 

[SkyNetRising]

can any of these be the reason or no way it can lead to a looping hibernation ?
or any other ideas ?

I'd suspect lid switch. It might be broken and making contact randomly and causing going into hibernation.

 

[chyady]

I'd suspect lid switch. It might be broken and making contact randomly and causing going into hibernation.

but can lid switch be triggered when under linux installation steps (which is a sort of "MS-DOS" but for linux) ?
also, i installed linux server, so no graphic, and also this happens as well

 

[COLGeek]

Temperature looks okay, if it stays around that. If spiking, you could have a problem.

Have you cleaned the laptop or replaced the CPU's thermal compound on the cooler?

 

[chyady]

Temperature looks okay, if it stays around that. If spiking, you could have a problem.

Have you cleaned the laptop or replaced the CPU's thermal compound on the cooler?

it doesnt even have time to increase after 1min it goes to sleep...
i didnt touch the motherboard/CPU/thermal and really, temperature is stable (it happens very early after boot once i login on ubuntu, then 20sec later, sleep)

 

[COLGeek]

As an experiment, try a different distro/OS. Something like Linux Mint.

 

[chyady]

copied Linux Mint iso to USB stick, turned on computer, and no hibernation until I saw the Linux Mint icon just before it loads the OS in memory (not installed yet), at that point it went twice in hibernation.

then, once i'm on Linux Mint interface i see on top left "install linux mint" icon, and here, no hibernation, i can wait longer, doesnt go in hibernation.

then i ran the installation, no hibernation
selected keyboard layout
added wifi
selected media codec
selected installation type
then clicked "install now"
still no hibernation
install continues, and no hibernation, not once during all install...except that screen now froze at what i think is almost the end of the install..

i will try again but in the meantime unsure what happened with ubuntu, and what is the reason...i would have preferred ubuntu server (no graphic, just simple line command), but at least i have an installed linux and without random hibernation. thanks a lot COLGeek for the debugging step.

so doesnt look like hardware issue but software then?

anything i can do to try to find the issue so that i could try again installing ubuntu server ?

 

[COLGeek]

This is an old Sony, not Asus. Correct?

 

[COLGeek]

With only 4GB of memory and an ancient CPU, what do you expect to do with this old beast?

 

[chyady]

This is an old Sony, not Asus. Correct?

correct, i edited the OP

i want to play around with it, install some docker to summarize text via LLM or to install n8n.
Ambitious ?

 

[COLGeek]

correct, i edited the OP

i want to play around with it, install some docker to summarize text via LLM or to install n8n.
Ambitious ?

Very ambitious. Those old Sony laptops were peculiar. You won't be running an LLM on this relic. I'm not surprised that the power management is causing issues now.

As far as operating systems, a "lite" version would be more suited for it. Like Puppy Linux.

 

[chyady]

crazy that even at the installation of ubuntu step (prior to reaching even the graphical part) it went into hibernation due to lack of power !
but as i see that with Mint it didnt sleep once then it kinda confirms it.
I'll see Puppy Linux then, but will look for another one of my laptops to play with some lightweight LLM then.
Thanks a lot for your time and patience with me COLGeek