A month ago I revived my old-laptop-as-server I have at home. I don't do much in
it, just serve my photos, a map, provide a `ssh` trampoline for me and some
friends and not much more. This time I decided to tackle one of the most
annoying problems I had with it: That closing the lid led to the system to
suspend.

Now, the setup in that computer has evolved through some years, so a lot of
cruft was left on it. For instance, at some point I solved the problem by
installing a desktop and telling it not to suspend the machine, mostly because
that's how I configure my current laptop. That, of course,
was a cannon-for-killing-flies solution, but it worked, so I could focus in
other things. Also, a lot of power-related packages were installed, assuming the
were really needed for supporting everything I might ever wanted to do about
power. This is the story on how I removed them all, why, and how I solved the
lid problem... twice.

First thing to go were the desktop packages, mostly because the screen in that
laptop has been dead for more than a year now, and because its new space in the
house is a small shelf in my wooden desktop. Then I reviewed the power-related
packages one by one and decided whether I needed it or not. This is more or less
what I found:

* `acpi-fakekey`: This package has a tool for injecting fake ACPI keystrokes in
  the input system. Not really needed.
* `acpi-support`: It has a lot of scripts that can be run when some ACPI events
  occur. For instance, lid closing, battery/AC status, but also things like
  responding to power and even 'multimedia' keys. Nice, but not needed in my
  case; the lid is going to be closed all the time anyways.
* `laptop-mode-tools`: Tools for saving power in your laptop. Not needed either,
  the server is going to be running all the time on AC (its battery also died
  some time ago).
* `upower`: D-Bus interface for power events. No desktop or anything else to
  listen to them. Gone.
* `pm-utils`: Nice CLI scripts for suspending/hibernating your system. I always
  have them around in my laptop because sometimes the desktops don't work
  properly. No use in my server, but it's cruft left from when I used it as my
  laptop. Adieu.

Even then, closing the lid led to the system suspending. Who else could be there?
Well, there is one project who's being everywhere: `systemd`. I'm not saying
this is bad, but it *is* everywhere. Thing is, its login subsystem also handles
ACPI events. In the `/etc/systemd/logind.conf` file you can read the following
lines:

```ini
#HandlePowerKey=poweroff
#HandleSuspendKey=suspend
#HandleHibernateKey=hibernate
#HandleLidSwitch=suspend
#HandleLidSwitchDocked=ignore
```

so I uncommented the 4th line and changed it so:

```ini
HandleLidSwitch=ignore
```

Here you can also configure how the inhibition of actions work:

```ini
#PowerKeyIgnoreInhibited=no
#SuspendKeyIgnoreInhibited=no
#HibernateKeyIgnoreInhibited=no
#LidSwitchIgnoreInhibited=yes
```

Please check
[the config file's doc](https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/logind.conf.html)
if you plan to modify it.

Not entirely unrelated, my main laptop also started suspending when I closed the
lid. I have it configured, through the desktop environment, to only turn off the
screen, because what use is the screen if it's facing the keyboard and touchpad :)
Somehow, these settings only recently started to be in effect, but a quick search
didn't gave any results on when things changed. Remembering what I did with the
server, I just changed that config file to:

```ini
HandlePowerKey=ignore
HandleSuspendKey=ignore
HandleHibernateKey=ignore
HandleLidSwitch=ignore
HandleLidSwitchDocked=ignore
```

That is, “let me configure this through the desktop, please”, and now I have my
old behavior back :)

     PS: I should start reading more about `systemd`. A good starting point seems to
     be all the links in its [home page](https://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/).