Aha ... the standby/suspend/hibernate myth. Let me first try the CLI and then I will shift to the funky klaptop tray icon. Ok ...
* standby seems to work - [echo -n standby > /sys/power/state] OR [echo 1> /proc/acpi/sleep]. The klaptop icon also works. Also, if the lid is closed, the laptop is sent to standby mode.
* hibernate (suspend to disk) also works - [echo -n disk > /sys/power/state] OR [echo 4/4b> /proc/acpi/sleep]. The klaptop icon also works.
* suspend (suspend to ram) works - [echo -n mem > /sys/power/state]. However, the resume is unable to restore the display if we are in framebuffer mode (the general observation is this: after resuming, the screen remains blank, power light remains turned on. See if it is accepting keyboard input - try find / - this should cause heavy disk activity if keyboard is enabled. If not, then find some other way of connecting to the machine e.g. ssh and you will see that it is alive and can be safely rebooted.).
Based on Bugzilla bug 3670, I decided to stay away from framebuffer mode. So, I removed "vga=..." line from the boot options (i.e. from lilo.conf), downloaded and compiled video_post for userspace vga re-initialization and used the following for suspend [echo -n mem > /sys/power/state && modprobe i830 && /root/emu/video_post]
You might need to use the Sysrq magic if video does not reinitialize and you apparently think that hard booting is the only way out. Briefly, press Alt+SysRq (in my Dell 1100, SysRq = Fn+Delete) and then press S twice to sync the filesystems and then press B to reboot.
