Re: [RFC] Power Management Policies

[David Brownell <david-b@pacbell.net>]

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On Saturday 23 April 2005 12:18 am, Adam Belay wrote:
> > > 
> > > I personally have some concerns over too much userspace interaction. 
> > > I think these decisions are too device specific, and if we don't take
> > > responsibility for them, then the layers above the kernel may not be
> > > able to properly handle it.

Me too ...

> In general, it seems to make sense for userspace to tell the kernel about
> policy preferences, but then have the kernel execute those decisions.  If
> we were to ship suggested policy options inside of driver modules, then 
> driver developers could ensure the user is at least aware of typical policy
> configuration values.

The way I view things:  drivers offer choice-of-policy to userspace,
then userspace chooses the policy.

What I want to avoid is treating active userspace intervention as the
normal case ... polling every Nth-of-a-second as one example.  It's
quite reasonable for userspace to deal with higher level notions that
are already application-visible, like LCD (back)lighting or various
activity timeouts.  It's quite another thing to create interfaces
specifically to export low level monitoring to userspace.

- Dave

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