Merge lp:~jefferyto/ubuntu-docs/lp1232814 into lp:ubuntu-docs/trusty

[Jeffery To]

This updates the sample PolicyKit privileges file to enable hibernate, since now (since Saucy) hibernate is disabled in both upower and logind (by the policykit-desktop-privileges package).

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for your work. Does it make sense to separate "upower" and "logind" there? It's likely that most users don't know what those are, they probably want a "re-enable hibernate" which includes all the steps in one section...
If we keep the technical names we should at least explain what's the difference/what is going to be impacted by each

review: Needs Fixing

[Jeffery To (jefferyto)]

> Thanks for your work. Does it make sense to separate "upower" and "logind"
> there?

I only copied the relevant sections from /var/lib/polkit-1/localauthority/10-vendor.d/com.ubuntu.desktop.pkla, and changed "Disable" to "Re-enable" and "no" to "yes". I guess my thinking (if there was any) was that it would be easier to see how these policies overrode the defaults.

> It's likely that most users don't know what those are, they probably
> want a "re-enable hibernate" which includes all the steps in one section...
> If we keep the technical names we should at least explain what's the
> difference/what is going to be impacted by each

I suspect most users would copy-and-paste the text as-is, without considering whether it is in one section or two.

I'm also not familiar enough with upower and logind to say what is the difference between them or how they interact with the rest of the system. (Perhaps there can be links to more information about these, and even for polkit, as these topics seem tangential to this page.)

I don't have any strong feelings on this (my only concern was getting hibernate to work), so just let me know what changes to make and I'll make them :-)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

I've no strong opinion either, it would be good if somebody from the documentation team could comment there... if they don't I can try to get that moving, but that's probably not going to be before end of year holidays

[Benjamin Kerensa (bkerensa)]

Kevin or Lyz,

Do you have feedback on this merge proposal?

[Kevin Godby (godbyk)]

I appreciate the patch, but I don't think this is suitable for the system documentation. In my view, the system documentation should document the software as it exists and not provide workarounds for design decisions.

If the Hibernate menu option appears in the future, I'll happily document it.

I'm going to mark this bug as invalid for the documentation project. If the menu option is added in the future, feel free to reopen this bug against the docs project.

Thanks!

review: Disapprove

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

@Kevin: the hibernate option is disabled because judged not reliable enough, but it's an option many users want and the instructions described there are supported

(see the discussion on https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/technical-board/2013-December/001754.html for extra details)

[Kevin Godby (godbyk)]

Hi, Sebastien.

I read through the thread on the technical board mailing list, but didn't see anything that changes my viewpoint. Nothing suggested that the proposed method would cause hibernation to work better than it has in the past.

[Jeffery To (jefferyto)]

Hi Kevin,

Given the current technical constraints, I agree with the decision to disable hiberation by default. However, I think it would be helpful to be reminded that this decision stems from a technical limitation, that hibernation doesn't work reliably enough on untested machines. I don't think anyone is saying that users should be prevented from using hibernation (given that it works) under all circumstances.

(Whether there should menu options for suspend only, hybrid sleep only, suspend and hibernate, etc. is a separate usability / UX question, and one I don't particularly want to wander into right now :-) )

I believe the question regarding this merge request is whether we want to help those users that want to try to get hibernation working on their machines.

(With the current reasoning, one could argue that the documentation should not teach users how to install additional software, since we have already chosen a default set of applications for them. I don't believe anyone would want to make this argument though :-) )

I think the current documentation is very helpful; it explains why hibernation is disabled by default, and instructs those users that still want it to first test if it works on their machine, and if it works, how to re-enable it permanently. All that's missing is instructions that actually work :-)

[Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur)]

Kevin,

This patch is required to make the documented workaround work with newer releases. Either this change gets accepted, or the whole section needs to be taken out, but we shouldn't have it present and broken as it currently stands.

[Kevin Godby (godbyk)]

Ah, I understand the issue better now.

I'll merge in this patch to bring the instructions up to date.

We may review this page in the future and remove the workaround if too many users encounter problems with hibernation.

Thanks for the patch and for your patience!

review: Approve

[Jeffery To (jefferyto)]

Thanks for merging!

=== modified file 'ubuntu-help/C/power-hibernate.page'
--- ubuntu-help/C/power-hibernate.page	2013-09-19 00:20:18 +0000
+++ ubuntu-help/C/power-hibernate.page	2013-12-04 18:41:33 +0000
@@ -89,10 +89,15 @@
   Add the following to the file and save:</p>
 
 <code its:translate="no">
-[Re-enable hibernate by default]
+[Re-enable hibernate by default in upower]
 Identity=unix-user:*
 Action=org.freedesktop.upower.hibernate
 ResultActive=yes
+
+[Re-enable hibernate by default in logind]
+Identity=unix-user:*
+Action=org.freedesktop.login1.hibernate
+ResultActive=yes
 </code>
 
 </section>