Thanks to the help from the MepisLovers forum I have this working. The solution for me was to install uswsusp
Originally, the installation advice for Mepis 8.0 on an Acer Aspire One said not to use this package, so I removed it. Now it's okay apparently, and reinstalling it made everything well again. Perhaps if it had already been installed the recent apt-get upgrade would not have led to the failure I observed. A
