Ubuntu – Hibernation is still missing from menu in 13.10 after enabling via polkit. How to enable

13.10hibernateindicatorpower-management

I know that since 12.04, we need to add a policykit rule to enable hibernation (see question How to enable hibernation? and the Official Documentation).

I can successfully bring my laptop into hibernation mode with sudo pm-hibernate or sudo s2disk, so the rule is in place and works, but the hibernation entry is still missing in the menu.

I can tell from looking through the source of the indicator-session package (but not understanding the whole code) that there is still a hibernation menu entry in the code and it should be displayed when the system is capable of hibernating. Please calm down if you're enraged by this. This is very unlikely to be a conspiracy, but rather a bug/regression on a deeper level, which can happen when you move code around or replace it.

Question: What needs to be done in 13.10 to properly tell indicator-session that the system can hibernate?

Possible duplicate: Hibernation still not available – No activity, because saucy was in development at that time, so out of scope for AskUbuntu.

Best Answer

14.04 and beyond

Mitch points out in his answer for 14.04 and 16.04 that you should check 10-vendor.d/com.ubuntu.desktop.pkla before modifying anything. Also check that you have Secure Boot disabled and if that brings the menu option back.

Re-enabling the hibernation option in the menu

To re-enable the hibernation option in the menu, your /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/com.ubuntu.enable-hibernate.pkla should be modified to look like the following in saucy (13.10):

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

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

Then reboot or run killall indicator-session-service in your session and you should have your hibernate functionality/menu option back. Create the file if it doesn't exist already.

Investigation from bug report

Citation from Jeffery To's post on Launchpad Bug Report #1232814:

For Saucy, indicator-session was updated to use logind (org.freedesktop.login1) instead of upower.

If you check /var/lib/polkit-1/localauthority/10-vendor.d/com.ubuntu.desktop.pkla, you'll see that hibernate is disabled by default in both upower and logind.

So the first step to re-enable the Hibernate option is to edit /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/com.ubuntu.enable-hibernate.pkla to something like:
[Re-enable hibernate by default in upower]
Identity=unix-user:*
Action=org.freedesktop.upower.hibernate
ResultActive=yes

[Re-enable hibernate by default in logind]
Identity=unix-user:*
Action=org.freedesktop.login1.hibernate
ResultActive=yes
After rebooting, the login screen session menu should have a Hibernate option.

[...]

All thanks and credit go to Jeffery!

Why was hibernation disabled?

There exists a bug report on launchpad that suggests disabling suspend/hibernate instead of tracking which hardware "certifies" for which power modes. It's claimed to be a more scalable approach.

Another thing to mention is that using UEFI Secure Boot and hibernation appears to be possible but may be a risk to circumvent the former. (1, 2) As a reminder, when you use hibernation you store everything in RAM to disk without encryption, this includes passwords for encrypted filesystems and containers.

At some point with 16.04 I had to disable Secure Boot to be able to hibernate my laptops. In my case I used uswsusp and testing with s2disk returned the message below. This may give you a hint that your issue, why you can't hibernate although everything else is in place, is related to Secure Boot:

s2disk: Could not open the snapshot device. Reason: Operation not permitted

However, please understand that this is not a place to complain and please be nice.

Related questions

How can I tell Ubuntu to do nothing when I close my laptop lid? (or tell Ubuntu to hibernate when closing the laptop lid)

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to enable hibernation

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

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

Or in 14.04 and later:

[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

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.

Ubuntu – How to suppress or disable the shutdown option from indicator menu or shutdown dialog

In case integration to the indicator menu is not a prerequisite we can always define a custom launcher or a custom application indicator calling the follwing command to allow system restart only:

/usr/lib/indicator-session/gtk-logout-helper -r