README

=== pm-utils ===

What is pm-utils?

* Pm-utils provides simple shell command line tools to suspend and
  hibernate computer that can be used to run vendor, distribution, or
  user supplied scripts on suspend and resume.

Why do we need it?

* All the main distributions  are re-implementing the same
  functionality to support common power management
  operations. pm-utils provides a standardized distribution agnostic
  layout and interface for common power management tasks, which frees
  software and hardware vendors from having to maintain
  distribution-specific suspend/resume functionality.

* Suspend/resume functionality can be easily modified by installing
  files into the /etc/pm/sleep.d directory.  These files, known as
  hooks, can perform specific tasks on suspend/resume, such as:
   
   - enabling and disabling standby LED's on laptop hardware 
   - enabling suspend GUI's like suspend2 
   - re-enabling video
   - starting and stopping services that can't cope with suspending 
   - re-syncing the time with ntp 
   - removing and modprobing modules when needed 
   - setting grub to be the default target for a hibernate-resume 
   - other wacky things that need doing on specific systems

How do hooks work?

* You put an executable file in /etc/pm/sleep.d.  When suspend or
  hibernate is called, several things happen:
  
  1) The files in /etc/pm/config.d/* are evaluated in C sort order.  
     These files can be provided by individual packages outside of
     pm-utils, and contain globally available configuration settings
     for pm-utils and the hooks.
  2) Each of the hooks in /etc/pm/sleep.d/* are executed in C sort
     order, with a command line argument of either "suspend" or "hibernate". 
  3) The system suspends or hibernates.
  4) Some event happens to wake the machine up
  5) Each of /etc/pm/sleep.d/* are executed in reverse C sort order,
     with a command line argument of "resume" or "thaw".

* For more detailed information on how hooks work and how to write one,
  read HOWTO.hooks .

* For information on how to debug pm-utils, read README.debugging.

  That's it!