Re: + restore-missing-sysfs-max_cstate-attr.patch added to -mm tree

Andrew Morton
2007-11-30T22:22:22Z

On Fri, 30 Nov 2007 14:06:55 -0800
"Pallipadi, Venkatesh" <venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com> wrote:

Please dont go off-list like this. I put Mark's original mailing list cc's
back.

>
> I will have to Nack this. The reason max_cstate was initentionally
> removed due to couple of reasons:

It broke userspace without any warning or migration period, afaict.

> 1) All in kernel users of max_cstate should rather be using
> pm_qos/latency interfaces. All such max_cstate usages must already be
> migrated.

That code isn't merged.

> 2) Supporting max_cstate as a dynamic parameter cleanly is no longer
> possible in acpi/processor_idle.c as the C-state policy has moved to
> cpuidle instead. It can be done if it is needed. But, just below patch
> will not really work with cpuidle.
>
> Selecting max_cstate at boot time as a debug option still works without
> this patch.
>
> So, just this patch will not get back the functionality with cpuidle.
> Infact changing it at run time will have no effect. Question however is:
> Is there a real need to revive this parameter so that user can change
> max_cstate at run time?

It is not known whether Mark is actually writing to this thing. Perhaps
read-only permissions would be a suitable fix?