swsusp (Software Suspend) is a kernel feature (i.e., program) which is part of power management framework in the Linux kernel.
It is the default suspend framework as of kernel 3.8.
SWSUSP helps to drive the system to a low power state (called suspend) when not actively used, while providing the ability to return to the same state as before suspend (called resume/restore).
As of 3.8 Swsusp provides the following options under suspend: For more details on Swsusp refer to kernel documentation under Documentation/power/swsusp.txt To enable swsusp, the following should be selected during kernel configuration: The /dev/resume_partition needs to be replaced by the actual swap partition that is to be used for suspending.
The actual suspend is done by: echo shutdown > /sys/power/disk; echo disk > /sys/power/state You may check other suspend options available by doing cat /sys/power/state depending on your kernel config, it will show something similar to [standby] mem disk and options available under disk can be viewed by cat /sys/power/disk depending on your kernel config, it will show something similar to [platform] shutdown reboot swsusp lacks compression and graphical progress indication, which can be provided through Uswsusp.