[OmniBook] presentation

[Matt Taggart]

Jogi =?iso-8859-15?Q?Hofm=FCller?= writes...

> * olinuxx <humbert.olivier.1 at free.fr> [2006-04-14 04:09]:
> > But, is it a danger to format completly the disk?
> > I've got 2 parts on the disk, can i take all for GNU linux or must i keep=
> > the partition "hibernate HP"?
> 
> ASAIK only if you want to use suspend. I tried it years ago but never
> felt it does what I expected it ;) I guess there are more experienced
> people on this list when it comes to this issue.

The partition is used for "suspect-to-disk" (aka hibernate) which is the 
APM suspend that writes the contents of your memory and the state of the 
processor and devices to that parition and then powers the machine off 
completely. Then when you turn it back on the BIOS checks that partition, 
sees that the machine had been suspended, and then restores the memory and 
cpu state from the disk and then you're back where you were when you 
suspended. The suspend and wake up process take maybe 30seconds to 2minutes 
depending on how much RAM you have.

The other type of APM suspend is "suspend-to-ram" (aka suspend) and it just 
puts the machine in a low power state, but doesn't turn it all the way off. 
My ob500 could stay suspended for a day or two before the battery would run 
out. The suspend and wake up only takes a few seconds.

Since my ob500 was never more than 12 hours from being in a docking station 
or plugged in to a travel adapter, I almost exclusively used "suspend". 
Every once in a while I would use "hibernate" if I knew I was going to be 
away from power for a while.

If you want to be able to use "hibernate" you need to have the partition. 
The partition needs to be the size of your RAM plus some extra space for 
saving the CPU/video/etc state. If you need to recreate (or resize) the 
partition, you need to create a partition of the right size and with the 
right partition type and then use a Free Software tool to initialize the 
partition, IIRC it's lphdisk. The lphdisk software comes with instructions 
on how to size your partition, what type it needs to be, and how to 
initialize it.

Good luck,

-- 
Matt Taggart
taggart at fc.hp.com