Google Continues Working On Suspend-Only Swap Spaces For Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Google Continues Working On Suspend-Only Swap Spaces For Linux

Google engineers and other parties are interested in being able to create swap spaces on Linux systems that would be reserved just for system suspend/hibernation purposes and not for generic swapping to disk...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Suspend-Only-Swap-Spaces

[Azrael5]

This should make a big improvement on Linux Oses.

[skeevy420]

As long as a systemd service to flush the swap, remount it as hibernate, and then suspend/hibernate the disk comes out then this'll be nice. If I or an installer have to do something dumbass like create an 8gb primary swap and a $mem_size hibernate swap....

[You-]

When looking into hibernate recently, and comments such as "empty space in the swapfule might not be enough" I wondered why this hadnt been done already. I didnt expect it to be bigger than just creating a second swapfile maybe called hibernate.... but I guess(ed) it is trickier than that.

I am glad it is being worked on and it may lead to bulletproof suspend/hibernate.

[ssokolow]

Hmm. Hibernate to SSD, zram for normal swap.

[piorunz]

RAM is cheap. I bought 64GB of it with my recent Ryzen upgrade. No need for swap. Swap can be enabled on demand when hibernation is called, and disabled once PC is waked. Don't need to complicate that if you want to have hibernation only swap today.

[Paradigm Shifter]

When looking into hibernate recently, and comments such as "empty space in the swapfule might not be enough" I wondered why this hadnt been done already. I didnt expect it to be bigger than just creating a second swapfile maybe called hibernate.... but I guess(ed) it is trickier than that.

I am glad it is being worked on and it may lead to bulletproof suspend/hibernate.

It's funny, a separate hibernation file has been standard on Windows for years; I always wondered why Linux didn't do the same thing (especially since the introduction of swapfiles rather than just swap partitions) but to be honest, suspend/hibernate is the first thing I make sure is disabled on any new system, regardless of OS. I've had too many bad experiences with it both in Windows and Linux... like wondering why my back was getting so warm when I was on the train one day - turned out my laptop had decided to come out of hibernate and was slowly cooking itself.

My desktop systems are either switched off (gaming PC when not in use) or at full load 24/7 (work machines)... I did leave suspend/hibernate enabled on my new laptop, but I've got into the habit over the years of always shutting it down, so I think I've used the function once, by mistake.

[piorunz]

Sure, on systems that allow upgrading RAM. I have a laptop with 8 GB of soldered RAM.

Don't buy laptops with soldered RAM then. It's your fault.

[cynic]

Don't buy laptops with soldered RAM then. It's your fault.

yup, but sometimes you have to work with whatever your company gives you.

[piorunz]

yup, but sometimes you have to work with whatever your company gives you.

Yes, that's correct. But still, with low memory systems, swap can, and maybe should be enabled at all times, no innovation required there.
Only innovation we talk about here is Google's effort to have swap for hibernation only. You can have that today, just swap on -a before hibernation and swapoff -a after wakeup. Few lines in a script. Or you can do that with custom mount and umount instead etc. I guess to spin it off in elegant, separate setting is nicer for them.