How to enable hibernation?

Question

In Ubuntu 12.04 and newer, hibernation has been disabled by default in policykit. How can I enable this back?

Answer 1

If this answer does not work in Ubuntu 13.10, see here for an alternative answer

---

You can follow official documentation here. Hibernation was disabled on 12.04 for machines that are not certified with Ubuntu.

In order to enable hibernation you need to test whether it works correctly by running sudo pm-hibernate in a terminal. The system will try to hibernate. If you are able to start the system again then you are more or less safe to add an override.

To do so, start editing:

sudo nano /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/com.ubuntu.enable-hibernate.pkla

Fill it with this:

[Re-enable hibernate by default]
Identity=unix-user:*
Action=org.freedesktop.upower.hibernate
ResultActive=yes

Save by pressing Ctrl-O then enter and then exit nano by pressing Ctrl-X.

Restart and hibernation is back!

Or run killall unity-panel-service to just reset the menu.

Some users will then need to run sudo update-grub to get the hibernate option to be available in the power menu. Some users may also have to at least log out then log in to get it to appear in the (upper right) power menu.

Answer 2

Additionally, for those who want to disable the suspend button (for various reasons), proceed analogously...

Choose any file name, but this is one is verbose/convention:

sudoedit /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/com.ubuntu.disable-suspend.pkla

Fill it with this:

[Disable suspend by default]
Identity=unix-user:*
Action=org.freedesktop.upower.suspend
ResultActive=no

Ctrl+O, Enter, Ctrl+X

No need to restart, it should be gone as soon as you go into the shutdown menu.

Answer 3

One more thing:

When you want to add the hibernation option to XFCE's panel, you have to right-click your name (topright) and select properties.

After that a screen pops up:

Make sure, you check Hibernate like I did.

Answer 4

First, I do recommend that you test if your laptop supports hibernation, because the reason why hibernation is disabled by default is because it sometimes has fatal results on some machines. Test your machine by

Ctrl+Alt+T and then sudo pm-hibernate

Your machine should hibernate. Wake your machine up after hibernation and observe if it misbehaves or if it acts normally. If you experience any abnormality after the hibernation, then I advise you don't continue with the following procedure. However, if it works just fine, continue to activate hibernation by

sudo gedit /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/com.ubuntu.enable-hibernate.pkla

Edit the opened file and add this lines:

[Re-enable hibernation]
Identity=unix-user:*
Action=org.freedesktop.upower.hibernate
ResultActive=yes

After this, restart your machine, and upon login, you should see a hibernation option on the top right settings corner.

Answer 5

If the response with /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/com.ubuntu.enable-hibernate.pkla does not work as in my case, don't forget to delete the file by:

sudo rm /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/com.ubuntu.enable-hibernate.pkla

And try to use TuxOnIce.

---

First ensure you have enough of swap. It should be the same size or bigger as the amount of your RAM. Use command

free

rule Swap > Mem. If this is not the case, enlarge your swap size. Then install TuxOnIce by

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tuxonice/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tuxonice-userui linux-generic-tuxonice linux-headers-generic-tuxonice

Then you can try to do a hibernate test run by:

sudo pm-hibernate

Do not forget to save your work before you do it.

If all went fine, your computer will switch off. After switching it on, you will get your desktop in the state you left in it before hibernation.

Answer 6

For Ubuntu 14.04 with multiple users you´ll have to add this tags (so that is doesn´t depend of multiple-users or upower as manager instead of login1)

[Re-enable hibernate by default]
  Identity=unix-user:*
  Action=org.freedesktop.upower.hibernate
  ResultActive=yes

[Re-enable hibernate by default for login1]
  Identity=unix-user:*
  Action=org.freedesktop.login1.hibernate
  ResultActive=yes

[Re-enable hibernate for multiple users by default in logind]
  Identity=unix-user:*
  Action=org.freedesktop.login1.hibernate-multiple-sessions
  ResultActive=yes

Answer 7

A simple command which does the exact same thing as the accepted answer except non-interactively:

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/com.ubuntu.enable-hibernate.pkla
[Re-enable hibernate by default]
Identity=unix-user:*
Action=org.freedesktop.upower.hibernate
ResultActive=yes
EOF

Answer 8

I have translated above answers to bash scripts. This makes installation on multiple machines less tiresome.

Script enable-hibernate:

#!/bin/bash
#http://askubuntu.com/a/94963/164341
cat << '_EOF_' |sudo tee /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/com.ubuntu.enable-hibernate.pkla
[Enable Hibernate]
Identity=unix-user:*
Action=org.freedesktop.upower.hibernate
ResultActive=yes
_EOF_
clear
echo
echo 'Hibernate enabled.'
echo

Script disable-suspend:

#!/bin/bash
#http://askubuntu.com/a/154821/164341
cat << '_EOF_' |sudo tee /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/com.ubuntu.disable-suspend.pkla
[Disable suspend by default]
Identity=unix-user:*
Action=org.freedesktop.upower.suspend
ResultActive=no
_EOF_
clear
echo
echo 'Suspend disabled.'
echo

Note: Do not forget to chmod +x both scripts to make them executable.