On 2023-06-06 I ran a system upgrade on my PinePhone (running Manjaro Phosh) using pacman -Syu. Afterwards, automatic suspend stopped working.

The symptoms

If you are in the lock screen and have the display turned off (this can due to automatic blank screen, or due to manually pressing the power button), then shortly before the automatic suspend timeout, the notification blue LED will light up.

Previously (before the upgrade), if you ignore the notification, after reaching the timeout, the notification will be cleared, and the PinePhone will be suspended. If you turn on the screen before it suspended, it will very briefly show a notification that the phone will be automatically suspended. However the notification will clear itself almost immediately.

After the upgrade, the notification LED stays on, and the phone does not suspend. When the screen is turned on again, it will always display the notification (which will clear itself very quickly). Most notably, because it does not actually suspend, the battery drains itself within a few hours. I’d go to work in the morning (unplugging from the charger at 08:30), arrive back home at 18:00 and the phone has already turned itself off.

The solution

This has been provided by @alaraajavamma:urheiluaki.org from #pinephone.

gsettings set sm.puri.phosh.notifications wakeup-screen-triggers []

Note that this needs to be run on a terminal on the PinePhone. It does not work via ssh.

For future reference, the original value was ['urgency'].

Other observations

Things we tried and found out before reaching the solution.

  • Automatic suspend actually works if the display is turned on and not in the the lock screen.
  • sudo systemctl suspend - works.
  • systemctl suspend - works on a terminal on the PP. Does not work via ssh.

  • systemd-inhibit --list gives the following output:

    WHO            UID  USER    PID  COMM           WHAT                                                     WHY                                          MODE
ModemManager   0    root    3533 ModemManager   sleep                                                    ModemManager needs to reset devices          delay
NetworkManager 0    root    3513 NetworkManager sleep                                                    NetworkManager needs to turn off networks    delay
UPower         0    root    3993 upowerd        sleep                                                    Pause device polling                         delay
eg25manager    0    root    3311 eg25-manager   sleep                                                    eg25manager needs to prepare modem for sleep delay
manjaro        1000 manjaro 3826 phosh          handle-power-key                                         Phosh handling power key                     block
manjaro        1000 manjaro 4045 gsd-media-keys handle-power-key:handle-suspend-key:handle-hibernate-key GNOME handling keypresses                    block
manjaro        1000 manjaro 4045 gsd-media-keys sleep                                                    GNOME handling keypresses                    delay
manjaro        1000 manjaro 4046 gsd-power      sleep                                                    GNOME needs to lock the screen               delay
manjaro        1000 manjaro 3826 phosh          sleep                                                    Phosh handling suspend                       delay

9 inhibitors listed.