Comments on: Hibernating your MacBook, a zero-software approach

By: Mark Wheadon

Mark Wheadon — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:18:19 +0000

Oli: that could be because you have “Use secure virtual memory” turned on in System Preferences->Security->General? If you have, try turning it off and see if that fixes things?

I can’t help with the problem of it waking itself up though — unless something’s squeezing the MacBook enough to press a key?

By: Oli from the-iBlog

Oli from the-iBlog — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:02:53 +0000

I find that when I have my MacBook set to enter deep sleep, it never comes out of it correctly. The machine always crashes.

On a related note, the MacBook’s started waking itself up for apparently no reason too

By: How to enable hibernate mode on a Mac | Geek Guides

How to enable hibernate mode on a Mac | Geek Guides — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:17:23 +0000

[...] light has stopped pulsing – a sign that it’s still writing memory to disk), you can simply pop the battery to terminate hybrid sleep mode and power-off the MacBook. When you power it on again, it will then resume from [...]

By: DeusExMachina

DeusExMachina — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:16:36 +0000

I was under the impression that when secure VM is set and you attempt to set the hibernatemode to an incorrect setting, that it will default to hibernatemode 0.
Actually secure VM is only an issue in a very small number of cases, since it was only in its first implementation that OSX handled SVM and smartsleep badly. To get around this, Apple added hibernatemodes 5 and 7, which are the same as 1 and 3 respectively, but for secure VM. They write an unencrypted VM image, even if you have SVM selected in preferences. If you refuse to update your OS, the script can easily be made to work by adding a few more if/else statements to include hibernatemode 5 and 7. This should not be an issue with updated OSX.v installs, where hibernatemodes 0-3 work just fine with SVM.

Easier still, just use smartsleep pref pane.

By: alexkovelsky

alexkovelsky — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 14:02:50 +0000

But do not use that on Macs with secure virtual memory [so presumably unticking "Use secure virtual memory" in System Preferences->Security->General will do the trick --mcw]

By: alexkovelsky

alexkovelsky — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 02:20:18 +0000

Well, there is an AppleScript application to manipulate the way your MacBook sleeps (and it also support “hibernate now” feature):

rapidshare.com/files/194063472/Set_Sleep_Mode.zip

By: DeusExMachina

DeusExMachina — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 11:13:59 +0000

Alternately, one can just use the SmartSleep Pref Pane.

By: Mark Wheadon

Mark Wheadon — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 08:54:34 +0000

All good stuff. For the purposes of the article I wanted to avoid pmset and keep things entirely physical -- hence the visual way of figuring out if the machine is using sleep mode 3 rather than running pmset -g for example. People who use sudo pmset -a 1 to make the MacBook hibernate next time it sleeps (and use almost no power) need to remember to run sudo pmset -a 3 next time they switch on, or the MacBook will hibernate every time the lid's closed from then on. But in summary: the software that's missing from OS X as standard is this: something that tells the system to hibernate now, but doesn't change the default sleep behaviour -- something you click on when you know you've leaving the MacBook for a while and you would like it to consume no power in the mean time. The nearest to this that Mac OS X supports is Shut Down... which just isn't the same.

By: DeusExMachina

DeusExMachina — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 05:51:17 +0000

Apple certainly does provide such a means. Simply go to terminal and type:

$ pmset -g | grep hibernatemode

This will tell you what hibernate mode you are in. Mode 0 is simple sleep, like the old powerbooks used. Mode 1 always uses deep sleep, RAM written to disk, etc.. Mode 3 is the new default, RAM powered but also written to disk, standard sleep like on mode 0, but able to restore if power is interrupted. Mode 5 and 7 are the same as 1 and 3 except for cases where secure VM is set in System Preferences.

To change this setting, use:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode (the value you wish to set it to)

If you set it to 0, you can recover disk space by using:

sudo rm /var/vm/sleepimage

Hope that helps someone.

By: pao

pao — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:42:31 +0000

Amusingly, Apple laptops that support deep sleep automatically drop into deep sleep from normal sleep once the battery is as near as dammit flat.

Which begs the question: why on earth does Apple not provide a software way to just drop into deep sleep as standard?

Anyhow for what it is worth, the deep sleep facility works on MBPs since at least early 2007.