Surface build - sleep & rotating issues

[L0g0ff]

Slowness coming out of sleep, and occasionally forgetting it should be auto rotating are the biggest issues right now. All the rest feels great.

Todo:
Check linux-surface kernel for known bugs and implement these fixes.

Device:
Surface Pro 7 (1866 model)

[darkview224]

Addendum: also seems generally sluggish doing other operations after coming out of sleep. Might not be rotation-specific.

[L0g0ff]

I did some research. There are a lot of rotate and sleep error issues ;-)

I added surface-control command tool to the surface build. Maybe we can tweak some performance settings. The issues are very surface device specific.

Btw I don't have sleep, rotate issues and performance issues. But I have a surface laptop 3. So rotating is not an issue haha.

[darkview224]

I'll run the update, and let you know if I encounter these issues again.

[L0g0ff]

@darkview224

I've been researching the sleep/suspend issues on Surface devices with Fedora and the Surface kernel. Based on what I've found, this is a common problem with Surface hardware on Linux. Here are some potential solutions to try:

The Core Issue

Surface devices typically only support "Connected Standby" (s2idle) rather than traditional Suspend-to-RAM (deep sleep), which leads to higher battery drain during sleep.

Potential Solutions to Test:

1. Check Available Sleep Modes

First, let's see what your system supports:

cat /sys/power/mem_sleep

2. Configure Systemd Sleep Settings

Try configuring systemd to prefer deep sleep mode:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/sleep.conf

Add these lines under the [Sleep] section:

[Sleep]
SuspendState=mem
SuspendMode=deep

3. Kernel Parameter Configuration

If your system shows deep sleep support, kernel parameters like mem_sleep_default=deep could help, but since GRUB isn't user-modifiable in your setup, this would need to be integrated into the build configuration if testing shows it's beneficial.

4. Surface GPE Module Issues

Some Surface users have found that the surface_gpe module causes wake-on-lid-close issues. Try blacklisting it:

echo "blacklist surface_gpe" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

5. Consider Hibernation as Alternative

If suspend continues to be problematic, hibernation might work better on Surface devices. You'll need a swap partition/file equal to your RAM size.

6. Diagnostic Commands

Monitor your suspend cycles:

sudo journalctl | grep "PM: suspend" | tail -10

Check wake-up devices:

cat /proc/acpi/wakeup

Surface-Specific Notes

• Many Surface models (especially SB2, SP4, SP9, SL3, SL5) have known suspend issues on Linux
• Some models only support s2idle, which inherently uses more power
• BIOS updates can sometimes resolve suspend/resume problems

For Build Integration

If testing reveals that specific kernel parameters (like mem_sleep_default=deep) or systemd configurations work well, these could potentially be baked into the build for better out-of-the-box Surface support.

I'd recommend starting with checking your available sleep modes and then trying the systemd configuration first. Let me know what /sys/power/mem_sleep shows and we can go from there!

Hope this helps with the sleep issues in the Surface build.

[darkview224]

➜ cat /sys/power/mem_sleep [s2idle]

So unless there is a way to enable [deep] at the OS level, I can't do that I think.

Hibernate seems like a good option. Some people have found a workaround to enable it, but it's largely unsupported and expressly doesn't work with secure boot, which for various reasons I would like to keep enabled.
https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/guide-set-up-suspend-then-hibernate/7193/8

I will try blacklisting the surface gpe module, and see if that helps.