Re: [PATCH] Remove process freezer from suspend to RAM pathway

Pavel Machek
2007-07-08T20:56:04Z

Hi!

> But in a whole lot of cases, it's, I beleive, perfectly kosher to just
> return an error. You're trying to capture frame from your camera while
> the machine is suspended ? error. At worst, your capture app will be
> unhappy when you wakeup, nothing terrible and totally fixable in
> userland if it's a problem.

Well, that way you'd have to teach applications about suspend... Which
is quite bad. You mentioned it -- returning random errors will be
very bad for machines like OLPC that want to suspend
automatically. Plus it is a step back from current implementation, and
ABI change, too...

> > So instead, why not have the PM core take care of all this? There
> > could be a block_task_until_suspend_is_over() routine available for all
> > drivers to use. Its effect would be exactly the same as sending the
> > current task into the freezer, but it wouldn't be the freezer that
> > exists now. It would just be some routine that blocks until the system
> > suspend is over. We could call it "the icebox" instead of "the
> > freezer". :-)
>
> I'm not totally sure about that. I like some of it, but I think it's
> fairly different conceptually from the freezer (and the implementation
> could be as trivial as a single system wide wait queue).
>
> Basically it has a very big difference to the current freezer, and I
> like that, which is that we don't have some 3rd party trying to find out
> what to freeze and what not (the freezer), but instead, we have
> explicitely drivers or kernel threads sending -themselves- to the
> "icebox" when they think it's a good idea. Think of it as lazy
> freezing

Kernel threads already send _themselves_ to the refrigerator. [Plus we
put all the userland there, which is what you don't like, but kernel
can not rely on userland after suspend starts, anyway, so it should
not hurt].

Anyway.. PPC currently suspends without freezer, which puts rules on
drivers. ("Must handle i/o requests after .suspend() method is ran,
must not use GFP_KERNEL to do so, must not try to synchronously
communicate with userspace before _all_ devices are unfrozen") I am
not certain what the exact rules are, but you seem to know them. Could
we get Doc*/power/suspend_wo_freezer.txt describing them for driver
authors? That way we can make sure drivers work on ppc, too, and maybe
get rid of freezer in the long run.

> > You also agree that kernel threads and workqueues must be allowed to
> > operate during suspend.
>
> Yes, unless kernel threads explicitely decide to stop themselves (for
> example, khubd is a good candidate for that). Again, not a 3rd party
> trying to decide what to freeze and what not, but the drivers or kernel
> threads themselves deciding it.

This is how it works currently in -mm.

(Plus, the rule is that threads that decide _not to_ stop themselves
should not do any I/O.)
Pavel
--
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