Lenovo Z360 sometimes doesn't suspend, freezing up completely

Question

I have a new Lenovo Z360 laptop. About 1 in 5 times, instead of suspending when I close the laptop lid, the screen goes blank and the machine freezes and stays on, with the fan running. I have to hard-boot at that point, which sucks. I haven't been able to narrow down the scenario, exactly. This laptop doesn't have the NVidia card, just the Intel video. I've turned off desktop effects which didn't help. It has happened while plugged in and not plugged in.

Update: Upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 and this issue still happens.

Debug notes (per https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingKernelSuspendHibernateResume):

There are no flashing caps lock lights or similar.

Setting the boot param no_console_suspend and then switching to VT1 and running the commands setfont /usr/share/consolefonts/Uni1-VGA8.psf.gz and sudo pm-suspend will trigger suspend with this issue, but there is no text output beyond the last command.

The computer also freezes on shutdown (without actually shutting down) right after printing Power Down on the console.

[10123.4321] Power Down.

Answer 1

This is a known bug with suspend, and unfortunately there seems to be no fix for it as yet (as far as I know). I'll try to find a link if I can to one of the bug reports (I remember seeing it reported more than once).

In my experience, it tends to happen under the condition that the system is hot, so I'm not sure if that is related. It also happens often the first time I suspend after a kernel update, then ceases to occur again until either:

1. The system is piping hot.
2. I've done a kernel/driver update.

My suggestion, don't suspend if it's really hot, rather allow it to cool first (keeping a high intensity application running on suspend is a bad idea, even on windows, and generally is the cause of the heat problem), and restart twice after a kernel update (somehow that fixes it for me, not sure why).