Suspend and hibernate issues on XPS 15 9500 on Linux

Have you tried turning-off the 5 or 6 features in the BIOS mentioned in https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/hla8yk/how_to_enable_s3_deep_sleep_on_xps_17_9700_in/ ? It's for the XPS 17 but it looks like it's nearly identical to the 15.

I'm interested in buying an XPS 15 for work as well but the iffy linux support is discouraging.

I had not, thanks for the pointer. I've just tried it now and unfortunately, it did not solve the suspend issue.

I've found the issue for hibernation though so now at least I can hibernate.

The bad news is that I haven't found a solution for the suspend issue. But the good news is that I've found how to hibernate. It turns out it was an issue with graphics drivers.

I had not installed any driver for the dedicated graphics card yet however the logs were showing issues related to nouveau drivers (nouveau being the open source drivers for nvidia cards).

Jul 14 13:41:48 xps kernel: PM: pci_pm_freeze(): nouveau_pmops_freeze+0x0/0x10 [nouveau] returns -16
Jul 14 13:41:48 xps kernel: PM: dpm_run_callback(): pci_pm_freeze+0x0/0xb0 returns -16
Jul 14 13:41:48 xps kernel: PM: Device 0000:01:00.0 failed to freeze async: error -16

It turns out that hibernation was not able to shut down graphics and as a consequence did not hibernate at all. That's why I thought it restarted few seconds later.

Once I've installed the nvidia drivers with prime (for dual graphics) they automatically added rules to blacklist the nouveau drivers and so hibernation is actually working fine again!

How long does the laptop take to hibernate and resume? 

Not very long, basically roughly the same amount of time that a restart

I've tried the BIOS settings you've shared but they don't seem to work here either with deep sleep mode. The behaviour is the same, it just won't wake up.

andre_p,

I see your system shipped with Windows 10.  What version of Linux are you running?

Dell-Jesse L

@DELL-Jesse L It's a fresh Ubuntu 20.04 LTS install running kernel  5.4.0

I've also upgraded to the 1.2.1 BIOS. Windows 10 installation is gone.

Just to better understand the situation, is what we are all trying to do, i.e. deep sleep mode on the XPS 15 9500 supposed to work? Has it been tested at all?

My understanding is that there is no official support for the 9500. As such, I mostly wanted to ask if somebody already managed to do it (since I haven't seen any post with a successful solution yet for the 9500). And possibly make the issue visible for some Dell representatives. There might be people working there with a solution even if there is no official support

I have seen a couple accounts of people having successfully got it to work on the XPS 13 9300 [1] and XPS 17 [2], so I would expect the XPS 15 9500 to be able to support it as well.

@andre_p  could you try the Ubuntu OEM kernel (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/OEMKernel#How_to_install_it.3F)? It's not only more recent (based on kernel 5.6) but also it contains vendor patches from Canonical partners selling certified hardware (e.g. Dell, Lenovo, ...) to improve hardware compatibility that have not yet made it to the "mainstream" ubuntu kernel.

As the XPS 15/Precision 5550 are certified for Ubuntu, it's possible that the OEM kernel contains patches targeting these very machines.

It is possible that people reported deep sleep working on the XPS 13 in [1] due to the fact that their Developper Edition device might have come with the OEM kernel as default 

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[1] https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS-13-9300-Wake-from-sleep/m-p/7535386/highlight/true#M59272
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/hla8yk/how_to_enable_s3_deep_sleep_on_xps_17_9700_in/

Thanks for your message. I'm afraid our assistance with Ubuntu as OS is limited. Please try installing Windows and test if the issue persists. If so, do let us know we'll check this further.

Hi again

@Ben1837 Thanks for the hint with the OEM kernel. Didn't think about it before. Unfortunately, it doesn't improve the suspend-to-ram situation. I would say it's identical to the stock Ubuntu kernel. I should have also said that I am blacklisting the nouveau driver for the Nvidia card. So I am only on the integrated Intel GPU.

One thing that did improve with the OEM kernel is the fan noise though. The throttling is a lot better with this kernel and the system a lot quieter.

@Dell-SimranC I am not so much asking about Ubuntu specifically, rather about Linux in general. Windows is not an option for me I am afraid.

@andre_p too bad for the OEM kernel, at least it gives you better thermals, that's still a win 

I am not sure disabling the nouveau driver is enough to disable the discrete gpu, I suspect the GPU is still powered on and will consume battery. Have you been able to validate it?
Otherwise, you might want to try disabling the dGPU using acpi calls as explained in [1], or just simply installing the latest nvidia proprietary drivers and chosing the iGPU option in the prime settings (the nvidia drivers will then take care of disabling the descrete card itself) as explained in [2]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/78is1r/complete_disable_of_discrete_gpu/
[2] https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/402466/is-it-possible-to-completely-turn-off-nvidia-gpu-to-be-able-to-run-wayland

Can't confirm such issue on Debian 10 (Linux Kernel 5.2/5.6). So that is a distro/kernel issue.