Powering down without losing state

> Anyone have pointers on how to shut down for the night without fear of "losing
> one's place"?

I'm in the same boat. I'd shut down, but I want to re-open in the same
place. Even the Windows version of Firefox does a better job of this than
the Mac version (although, 2.0 may be better, I haven't tried it yet.)

Bruce

On 17/5/2007 2:14 AM, "clozach" <clozachilovelife.com> spake thus:

> Anyone have pointers on how to shut down for the night without fear of "losing
> one's place"?

All modern Macs support sleeping, so I've started doing that recently, after
discovering via Apple's energy calculator that I could save NZ$250 a year on
power bills if I don't leave my Mac Pro on all the time :)

<http://www.apple.com/environment/resources/calculator.html>

While it still uses more power than being completely off, it at least
preserves the current state, and comes back to life within about ten
seconds. This is the equivalent of "suspend" in the PC world. The next step
beyond this "hibernate", which entails dumping the memory contents out to
disk then switching off more or less completely (this can take a minute or
so to restore from). This is basically what Parallels does when you close it
down; Macs don't do it (yet).

I even came up with a cunning solution to ensure that the daily maintenance
jobs still run in the middle of the night (along with my own cron jobs that
I've set up, like the virus scanner). I have an ancient Pentium machine that
I use as a DNS server for my home network, so I've configured it to send the
Mac Pro a "wake on lan" packet just before the cron jobs are due. Basically
an elbow in the ribs (zzz... wha?! :) The Mac Pro then automatically goes
back to sleep once it's stopped doing stuff. Very nice.

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://xri.net/=nigel.stanger

On 16-May-2007, at 08:14, clozach wrote:
> Anyone have pointers on how to shut down for the night without fear
> of "losing one's place"?

Hibernate? I don't know if the desktops support this because my
machines are doing something 24x7, but you can at least run the pmset
command on a Mac Pro desktop machine.

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 1

On 17/05/2007, at 2:14 AM, clozach wrote:

> The trouble is, I often leave my computer in an unstable "work"
> state: browser tabs waiting to be read, Finder windows open for a
> certain project, etc. Shutting down requires losing my place; My
> computer needs a bookmark!

        Windows calls this Hibernate, OS X calls it SafeSleep. Effectively
it saves the contents of RAM to the hard disk and then powers down
the system. Unfortunately, unlike Windows Hibernate, SafeSleep is
only available on laptops. However, some very cleaver people on the
interweb have figured out how to hack this and make it work on other
systems as well. I used the scripts available here, <http://
matt.ucc.asn.au/apple/machibernate.html#makeitwork> to set it up on
my Mini and it works wonderfully. Now when I choose sleep from the
apple menu (or power dialog) the system Hibernates and then powers
off. When I wake it up again, it's back exactly as it was before.
        A couple of points to note, I have my Mini set to ask for my
password in order to unlock the screensaver (the closet thing I could
find to Windows lock workstation) and, after I power it back on, if I
don't type the password in within the timeout period, the machine re-
hibernates. The second point may just be paranoia on my part but I
won't install any Software Update without making sure I have a
complete system backup. (Some would probably argue that this should
be normal course anyway but I wasn't quite as concerned before)

Jason

On 5/18/07 08:01, "Nigel Stanger" <nstangerinfoscience.otago.ac.nz> wrote:

> This is basically what Parallels does when you close it
> down; Macs don't do it (yet).

Sort of. The Laptops will, if they're asleep and you run out of battery.
There are utilities out there to force this, but I don't know if they work
on towers or not.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

At 06:01 -0700 UTC, on 2007-05-18, Bruce Sherman wrote:
> I'm in the same boat. I'd shut down, but I want to re-open in the same
> place. Even the Windows version of Firefox does a better job of this than
> the Mac version (although, 2.0 may be better, I haven't tried it yet.)

If you're only interested in saving your web browser's current state, give
iCab a try. With its "Auto-save session" function on, it will open all web
pages you had open when you quit it. IIRC Opera offers the same.


[As does OmniWeb, with its workspaces, and Firefox 2.0 with the Session
Restore feature, though there are other plugins to extend it, I think. -Adam]


--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

On 2007-05-19, at 09:31, John C. Welch wrote:

> Sort of. The Laptops will, if they're asleep and you run out of
> battery.

To clarify: the newer laptops always write the contents of memory to
disc before going to sleep. When you wake the laptop up its first
choice is to use what's been saved in RAM. If the battery ran out
when the machine was asleep it'll load the memory back off the disk
image.

(Currently the memory is written unencrypted, so potential security
issue with passwords in RAM being written to disk.)

On 18-May-2007, at 07:02, Google Kreme wrote:
> On 16-May-2007, at 08:14, clozach wrote:
>> Anyone have pointers on how to shut down for the night without fear
>> of "losing one's place"?
>
> Hibernate? I don't know if the desktops support this because my
> machines are doing something 24x7, but you can at least run the pmset
> command on a Mac Pro desktop machine.
>
> sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 1

I did this command (actually with a 5 not a 1 because I use secure
VM) and, since I was going to gone for a few hours today and there
was nothing crucial going on on my machine, I hit the power button
before I left. The machine went into sleep and then powered off.
When I got home, I hit the power button again and the machine
restored itself from safe-sleep.

The only issue was that one of my USB2 external drives did not
remount, and I had to power off the drive and turn it back on;
otherwise the session was restored exactly as I left it.

To be clear, I did not do anything other than the pmset command from
the command line (no OF equivalent commands)

So, at least for the Intel PowerMacs, safe sleep works, whether or
not it is officially 'supported'.

On 21/05/2007, at 6:10 AM, albo wrote:

>> Windows calls this Hibernate, OS X calls it SafeSleep. Effectively
>> it saves the contents of RAM to the hard disk and then powers down
>> the system.
>
> Will this work if there's no external power to the computer? (a
> desktop
> G5 in this case).

        Yes, quite happily. I often Hibernate my G4 Mini before I take it
from home to work or vice-versa.
        Another thing that I've noticed, because the machine is returning
from Sleep mode (even though it's physically off) there is no startup
chime.

Jason

> [As does OmniWeb, with its workspaces, and Firefox 2.0 with the Session
> Restore feature, though there are other plugins to extend it, I think. -Adam]

I've found the Firefox session restore to be a bit weird. Every time I start
up Firefox, it claims that my previous session terminated abnormally, even
when it didn't (in fact, I don't think I've ever had Firefox fall over on
me). This gets a little annoying after a while :)

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://xri.net/=nigel.stanger

On 21/5/2007 6:10 AM, "albo" <albocritpath.org> spake thus:

> I use anacron http://members.cox.net/18james/anacron-tiger.html - for
> those of us who don't leave the computer on 24/7

Yes, I use that as well, but I have a couple of jobs are very disk intensive
(e.g., the virus scanner), so I *do* want to run them in the wee small hours
when I'm not around to be slowed down by them. Otherwise I'd have just gone
with anacron and be done with it.

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://xri.net/=nigel.stanger

On 2007-05-21, at 06:10, albo wrote:

> In our home we have everything that plugs in (except
> for the fridge and a clock) on power strips; these are switched off
> except when in use, because most electronic devices use some power
> even when turned off

It's nice to read about somebody else doing this! We end up with
more than 2 devices on 24/7, but we are diligent about 'hard'
powering off everything not in use.

> Windows calls this Hibernate, OS X calls it SafeSleep. Effectively
> it saves the contents of RAM to the hard disk and then powers down
> the system. Unfortunately, unlike Windows Hibernate, SafeSleep is
> only available on laptops. However, some very cleaver people on the
> interweb have figured out how to hack this and make it work on other
> systems as well. I used the scripts available here, <http://
> matt.ucc.asn.au/apple/machibernate.html#makeitwork> to set it up on
> my Mini and it works wonderfully. Now when I choose sleep from the
> apple menu (or power dialog) the system Hibernates and then powers
> off. When I wake it up again, it's back exactly as it was before.


Will this work if there's no external power to the computer? (a desktop
G5 in this case). In our home we have everything that plugs in (except
for the fridge and a clock) on power strips; these are switched off
except when in use, because most electronic devices use some power even
when turned off (up to 50% of what they use when on for some of the more
ridiculous ones).

       

> I even came up with a cunning solution to ensure that the daily
> maintenance
> jobs still run in the middle of the night (along with my own cron jobs
> that
> I've set up, like the virus scanner). I have an ancient Pentium
> machine that
> I use as a DNS server for my home network, so I've configured it to
> send the
> Mac Pro a "wake on lan" packet just before the cron jobs are due.
> Basically
> an elbow in the ribs (zzz... wha?! :) The Mac Pro then automatically goes
> back to sleep once it's stopped doing stuff. Very nice.
I use anacron http://members.cox.net/18james/anacron-tiger.html - for
those of us who don't leave the computer on 24/7 it runs the maintenance
tasks in the background on reboot and checks on a regular basis to make
sure they're being done.

ALbo

Tom Robinson wrote:
> On 2007-05-21, at 06:10, albo wrote:
>
>> In our home we have everything that plugs in (except
>> for the fridge and a clock) on power strips; these are switched off
>> except when in use, because most electronic devices use some power
>> even when turned off
>
> It's nice to read about somebody else doing this! We end up with
> more than 2 devices on 24/7, but we are diligent about 'hard'
> powering off everything not in use.
>
>
You must not have many Tivos, Cordless phones, etc... I've looked at this issue and have become somewhat frustrated that there's no incentive to supply demand triggered wall warts and other such items. Especially for the dozens of re-chargeable items we own.

At 14:31 on 18-05-2007, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
> If you're only interested in saving your web browser's current state, give
> iCab a try. With its "Auto-save session" function on, it will open all web
> pages you had open when you quit it. IIRC Opera offers the same.
>
>
> [As does OmniWeb, with its workspaces, and Firefox 2.0 with the Session
> Restore feature, though there are other plugins to extend it, I think. -Adam]

Camino (a Mac Mozilla-based browser) also offers this as a built-in
feature on the latest 1.1b beta.

<http://caminobrowser.org>

_________________
=> Jolin

I've been a big fan of saving my work state by putting my PowerMac or iMac into sleep mode rather than shutting down. That was till two weeks ago.

Now everytime I wake from sleep I have lost ethernet connectivity (hence internet--my network settings show a self-assigned ip address) and can only regain it by rebooting (with obvious loss of work state). Searching the internet shows that lots of people experience similar problems, in particular with airport. I've tried most suggestions found there so far to no avail. Resetting PRAM and PMU/SMU. Deleting all caches. Deleting system and network preference files and rebuilding connections from scratch. The only serious suggestion I haven't yet tried is rolling back the .kext responsible for internet to an older version.

Any suggestions, or positive experiences in solving such a problem would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Ewen

On 22-May-2007, at 13:44, David Ross wrote:
> You must not have many Tivos, Cordless phones, etc... I've looked
> at this issue and have become somewhat frustrated that there's no
> incentive to supply demand triggered wall warts and other such
> items. Especially for the dozens of re-chargeable items we own.

I can't imagine the aggravation of having to walk up to the cabinet
and turn on the power strip before the various remotes work, it's
aggravating enough just fishing the remotes out of the couch
cushions! Even so, it would mean plugging the TiVo in somewhere
else. I have to wonder who much energy people really save this way
(and the computers are off limits, they are running 24x7 doing
something, my machine doesn't even sleep, and the G4 doesn't support
safe-sleep, so that one is not going to be powered off either.

On 2007-05-23, at 07:44, David Ross wrote:

> You must not have many Tivos, Cordless phones, etc... I've looked
> at this issue and have become somewhat frustrated that there's no
> incentive to supply demand triggered wall warts and other such
> items. Especially for the dozens of re-chargeable items we own.

(I actually intended to send my thoughts back-channel, but seeing as
someone's replied...)

Actually we have numerous chargers. We plug them into power-strips
with individual switches, and turn them on & off as needed. Ditto
printer, scanner, washing machine.

I have seen demand based power-strips, but of course, they suck
standby power while monitoring the demand.

Our dishwasher and TV both have 'hard' on/off switches, the drier's
so old it does too. The Grundig TV is particularly ingenious: you
have to turn it on at the TV, but you can do a 'hard' off using the
remote control--the remote triggers some kind of solenoid which
releases the on/off switch.

The heated towel-rail's on a timer, so only consumes minimal power in
the 'off' period.

We do have a number of items on 24/7 8-( including my MacBook in
sleep mode, AirPort Express, cable modem, server, answerphone,
security system, clocks...

I'm in the same boat. I'd shut down, but I want to re-open in the same place. Even the Windows version of Firefox does a better job of this than the Mac version (although, 2.0 may be better, I haven't tried it yet.)

For Safari users, try SafariStand. If Safari crashes or is quit, SafariStand offers to restore previously opened windows upon relaunching Safari. You can select which windows and tabs to restore.

Finally returned to check on this thread I'd started...and what a wealth of information has turned up!

Once again, TidBITS readers showing how intelligent, knowledgeable and civilised they are.

Thanks all! -Chris