Dear Intelistas,
I have an Intel NUC5i5RYH (rebadged as a System76 Meerkat), which was delivered on 14 Oct 2015, with Intel BIOS v.0249 in firmware, and it booted from its M.2 SSD [1] into pre-installed Ubuntu 15.04 in around 15 seconds.
My NUC has now been bricked by the well-known 'Ubuntu Suspend > Dead NUC' problem [2] fivesix* times (in 54 58 days of usage), about which many threads exist here at communities.intel.com (dating back at least a year) – and here is a list of what steps I've taken from those threads as potential fixes and implemented on my NUC, but all to no avail:
- upgrading the BIOS firmware: neither Intel BIOS v.0350 nor v.0352 (nor System76 BIOS v.0350) eliminate the 'Ubuntu Suspend > Dead NUC' problem – and upgrading has slowed down its boot time from ~15 seconds to ~2 minutes <sigh>
- mikec_intel's BIOS settings fix [3] does not eliminate the 'Ubuntu Suspend > Dead NUC' problem
- prigaux's 'echo 0 > /sys/power/pm_async' fix [4] does not eliminate the 'Ubuntu Suspend > Dead NUC' problem
For now, the only effective way to avoid getting my NUC bricked for a sixthseventh time would seem to be the major inconvenience of avoiding using the Ubuntu Suspend function altogether; and I'd be very grateful if anybody could recommend a way to get my NUC back to booting up in ~15 seconds, as it did when new (and as might be expected from a motherboard-bound SSD boot drive).
Has Intel really failed completely to address this 'Ubuntu Suspend > Dead NUC' problem?
Or is there yet another potential fix to the 'Ubuntu Suspend > Dead NUC' problem I should try?
Thanks in advance for your attention and help.
Yours in frustration and disappointment,
Tim Jones
__________________________________________________________________
* UPDATES are in red: My NUC has now been bricked by the well-known 'Ubuntu Suspend > Dead NUC' problem SIX times (in 58 days of usage).
[1] Its M.2 SSD: "M.2 SATA: Samsung SSD 850 EVO M.2 250GB : PART 0 : Boot Drive"
[2] The well-known 'Ubuntu Suspend > Dead NUC' problem:
- Mean time between failures: 9.7 days (6 failures in 58 days use, in my personal experience) 10.8 days (5 failures in 54 days of use, in my personal experience)
- Symptoms #1: each use of the Ubuntu Suspend function carries a small but real risk of bricking the NUC. When Ubuntu Suspend is used and works normally, the NUC goes into sleep mode, and the Power button LED winks amber. When the 'Ubuntu Suspend > Dead NUC' problem occurs, these are the symptoms which afflict sleep mode:
- a short press on the Power button does not wake the NUC (as it ought to, and usually does) – the amber winking just continues; and
- a long press on the Power button does not switch the NUC off (as it ought to, and usually does) – the amber winking just continues.
- Symptoms #2: the only way to get the NUC to power off is by disconnecting the power cable. After the power cable is reconnected:
- a short press on the Power button does not switch the NUC on (as it ought to, and usually does) – the NUC is bricked; and
- a long press on the Power button does not start the NUC up in Power Button Menu mode (as it ought to, and usually does) – the NUC is bricked.
- Workaround: to get my NUC to work again, I have to fully disassemble the NUC, disconnect and reconnect the CMOS battery from the motherboard, and reassemble the NUC.
- Users of Linux distributions other than Ubuntu (eg: Arch Linux, Fedora) have also reported experiencing this NUC bricking on using Suspend, so it could be described more inclusively as the 'Linux Suspend > Dead NUC' problem.
[3] mikec_intel's BIOS settings fix – as detailed in:
● 'NUC5i7RYH did not wake from sleep mode', 11-Sep-2015 to 15-Nov-2015
» https://communities.intel.com/message/331090#331090
...and involves making changes in Intel Visual BIOS settings.
[4] prigaux's 'echo 0 > /sys/power/pm_async' fix – as detailed at post #10 in:
● 'NUC dead after suspend mode in Ubuntu 14.10', 23-Dec-2014 to 28-May-2015
» https://communities.intel.com/message/309188#309188
...and involves using rc.local to write '0' into /sys/power/pm_async at each boot up.
PS: I've sought help from System76 tech support, but sad to say they're about as useful as a chocolate teapot – so I'm hoping the Intel NUC community might be of some actual help in addressing these problems.