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I just bought a Dell XPS 13 laptop preloaded with Ubuntu. I have had great success with Ubuntu on Dell in the past and would have thought that one that comes preloaded would work even better but this isn't the case. My main issue right now is that when I close the lid and reopen it later, about 30% of the time it is frozen to a black screen and I have to do a hard reboot by holding the power button.

Googling around, I found others complaining of this on the dell forums:

And a possible solution on kernel.org

My question is. Since a solution seems to exists how long can I expect for this to make it into an update (of the stock Ubuntu that came with my machine)? Should I look into upgrading to the mainline kernel? I am not super comfortable with playing with my OS innards but I don't want to have to hard reboot my machine multiple times a day for months. Any recommendations?

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4 Answers 4

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When you go to wake up the laptop try pressing:

Ctrl +Alt + F2

this will display a terminal like window asking for your login.

Now hit:

Ctrl +Alt + F7 - you should now see your graphical login screen.

2

Black screen on resume from suspend is a kernel panic caused by the wireless card (Broadcom) changing its status.

For current solution, see below...


Outdated solution 1

You can now fix the problem by applying the following patch :

wget https://launchpadlibrarian.net/196100480/0014-null-pointer-crash.patch
sudo cp 0014-null-pointer-crash.patch /usr/src/bcmwl-6.30.223.248+bdcom/patches/

Add the path of the patch file in your dkms.conf file :

sudo nano /usr/src/bcmwl-6.30.223.248+bdcom/dkms.conf

Your dkms.conf should look something like this after your changes :

PACKAGE_NAME="bcmwl"
PACKAGE_VERSION="6.30.223.248+bdcom"
CLEAN="rm -f *.*o"

BUILT_MODULE_NAME[0]="wl"
MAKE[0]="make -C $kernel_source_dir M=$dkms_tree/$PACKAGE_NAME/$PACKAGE_VERSION/build"
DEST_MODULE_LOCATION[0]="/updates"
PATCH[0]="0001-MODULE_LICENSE.patch"
PATCH[1]="0002-Makefile.patch"
PATCH[2]="0003-Make-up-for-missing-init_MUTEX.patch"
PATCH[3]="0010-change-the-network-interface-name-from-eth-to-wlan.patch"
PATCH[4]="0011-do-not-define-__devinit-as-__init-in-linux-3.8-as-__.patch"
PATCH[5]="0012-add-support-for-Linux-3.15.patch"
PATCH[6]="0013-gcc.patch"
PATCH[7]="0014-add-support-for-Linux-3.17.patch"
PATCH[8]="0015-add-support-for-Linux-3.18.patch"
PATCH[9]="0016-repair-make-warnings.patch"
PATCH[10]="0017-add-support-for-Linux-4.0.patch"
PATCH[11]="0014-null-pointer-crash.patch" 
#PATCH_MATCH[6]="^3.[10-11]"
AUTOINSTALL="yes"

Reload the module :

sudo /usr/lib/dkms/common.postinst bcmwl 6.30.223.248+bdcom /usr/share/bcmwl x86_64 $(uname -r)

You won't have anymore black screen on resume from suspend. See here for more informations.


Outdated solution 2

A PPA including the fix has been set up by Canonical. Simply use the repository and no need to manually apply the previous patch anymore.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:inaddy/lp1415880
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Newest solution

There is no need to add additional PPA anymore. A fix as been released in Ubuntu repositories. Simply install the patched version by update your system :

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
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I recently found this tip from a Dell twitter account.

I installed the packages. Crossing my fingers...

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  • In case the link goes away: It eventually gets to dell.com/support/article/uk/en/ukdhs1/SLN297551/… and involves downloading a zip file and applying patches to the kernel
    – antonyh
    Jul 18, 2015 at 20:00
  • 1
    Further information: this is a backport of the i915 driver used by the Intel HD graphics, from Kernel 3.19 to 3.13. This will probably not help if 3.14 or later is being used. As far as I can tell, upgrading to 15.04 would also upgrade this driver sufficiently (not sure about 14.10). I've installed these patches myself on 14.04 running a 3.13 kernel and they appear to help (roughly 6 suspends, no failure yet).
    – antonyh
    Jul 19, 2015 at 19:53
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I had an identical issue and had tried a number of solutions to no avail. Finally, installing the 4.6.7-040607-generic kernel fixed the issue for me.

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