Send Computer To Sleep Or Hibernate From The Terminal

In this short article I will show you how to suspend and send to hibernation your Linux box, from the terminal.

The command for sleep or suspend, is pm-suspend. pm-suspend is included in the pm-utils package, on Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pinguy, Knoppix and other Debian based distros.

Suspend Linux Box: sudo pm-suspend

To send your computer to hibernation, use pm-hibernate.

Hibernate Linux Box: sudo pm-hibernate

You can also hybrid suspend your computer, with pm-suspend-hybrid.

The hybrid command saves the hard disk session and keeps the system on, allowing a the computer to fast resume.

Hybrid Suspend Linux Box: sudo pm-suspend-hybrid

All, the pm-* tools (pm-suspend, pm-hybernate, pm-suspend-hybrid) are included in the pm-utils package.

$ dpkg -S /usr/sbin/pm-*
pm-utils: /usr/sbin/pm-hibernate
pm-utils: /usr/sbin/pm-powersave
pm-utils: /usr/sbin/pm-suspend
pm-utils: /usr/sbin/pm-suspend-hybrid

For other information, use:

$ man pm-action