Re: Hibernation considerations

Al Boldi
2007-07-15T17:40:28Z

jimmy bahuleyan wrote:
> Al Boldi wrote:
> > This should be the responsibility of the kexec'd hibernating kernel.
> > Note though in (6), the normal kernel takes care of preparing devices,
> > then the hibernating kernel dumps the image and either calls S4 or S3.
> > On resume from S3 it can immediately switch over to the normal kernel,
> > and from S4 the known bootup would occur.
> >
> >> (8) Hibernation and restore should not be too slow
> >>
> >> In my opinion, if more than one minute is needed to hibernate the
> >> system with the help of certain hibernation framework, then this
> >> framework is not very useful in practice. It might be useful to
> >> perform some special tasks (eg. moving a server to another place
> >> without taking it down), but it is not very useful, for example, to
> >> notebook users.
> >
> > The latest hibernating kexec patches boot a kexec'd modular kernel with
> > initramfs into crashkernel=16M@16M in less than one second. Switch-back
> > is almost instant. Add to this the time required to either store or
> > restore the image, and it may be obvious that this approach isn't
> > slower, but maybe even faster than the current swsusp.
>
> What about (9)? Would it be that a user choosing to build a kernel with
> hibernate support gets a additional modular kernel built (which he
> should then use for resumption) or he should configure & build the
> modular kernel independent of main kernel?
>
> Or will the Linux boot procedure change so that it always goes thru a
> modular part followed by kexec (just to be uniform)?
>
> Although the kexec approach seems interesting, the final user-scenario
> seems a bit complex (or confusing).

Well, it may sound confusing because it is so unexpectedly simple. I didn't
answer to (9) because from a user pov nothing should change, and everything
should be scriptable such that the user wouldn't even notice the kernel
using a new hibernation approach.

Thanks!

--
Al