Ubuntu doesn't suspend when battery is critically low

[zorblek]

I'm running Ubuntu Jaunty with the latest updates on a Dell XPS M1210 laptop. In Power Management Preferences, I have "When battery power is critically low" set to "Suspend". But when the battery gets low, the computer just powers off with no warning. As far as I can tell, there's no attempt to suspend. It doesn't have trouble suspending at other times (though occasionally it's a little slow). I don't have this problem in Windows XP (I dual-boot).

Does anyone know what might be causing this? I'd appreciate any help.

[Bölvaður]

Is the battery in a bad shape?

The only thing I can help you out with, is recommend hibernate over suspend, as hibernate doesnt use any thing from the battery at all, but may take a little longer to activate.

[zorblek]

The battery has decent capacity - not good as new, but good enough. Unfortunately hibernate has never worked with Ubuntu on this computer.

[hibliss]

The battery has decent capacity - not good as new, but good enough. Unfortunately hibernate has never worked with Ubuntu on this computer.

How big is your swap partition?

[zorblek]

How big is your swap partition?

I'm not sure. How would I check?

[binbash]

sudo fdisk -l

[zorblek]

Looks like it's a little over half a gig.

[XCan]

How much RAM do you have? Your swap needs to be able to contain the contents of your ram.

[LewRockwell]

it should also be noted for general reference purposes that BIOS updating has cured power management issues previously in some applications

.

[hibliss]

The amount of swap should be a bit larger. I would go with around 2gb to be safe. All of my machines running Ubuntu hibernate with no issues, each with a 2gb swap. They have varying amounts of ram, from 1-3gb.