Re: [PATCH 0/8] Suspend block api (version 8)

Rafael J. Wysocki
2010-05-29T20:12:36Z

On Saturday 29 May 2010, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Fri, 2010-05-28 at 23:44 +0200, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> > Consider updatedb or another file indexing ... thing on a laptop. I certainly
> > don't want anything like this to run and drain my battery, even if it has
> > already been started when the machine was on AC power. Now, of course,
> > I can kill it, but for that I need to notice that it's running and it presumably
> > might have done some job already and it would be wasteful to lose it.
> > It would be quite nice if that app was not regarded as runnable when the
> > system was on battery power.
>
> How will a ionice on steriods that will defer servicing IO when the IO
> system QoS limit doesn't meet the updatedb process's level is too low,
> not solve this?
>
> In that case the updatedb process will simply block on IO, will hence
> not be runnable and thus not drain your battery.

It will only work for apps that use I/O, but there may be purely CPU-bound
ones that need that kind of approach too.