RE: [linux-pm] Re: Hibernation considerations

Huang, Ying
2007-07-24T13:26:52Z

>From: Alan Stern [mailto:stern@rowland.harvard.edu]
>It can't. Indeed, in the absence of a freezer, user threads will need
>devices (more accurately, will submit I/O requests for devices) that
>have to be kept quiescent or low-power. Drivers will need to delay
>those requests until the devices are returned to full operation.
>
>That's exactly what I've been saying all along: Drivers will need to
>be changed to delay I/O requests, if there is no freezer.

If it is a too big work to implement "delaying I/O requests" for every
driver, is it possible to implement it as follow:

1. It is triggered to suspend to RAM/DISK.
2. Replace the driver related syscall entries (such as sys_read,
sys_write, sys_ioctl, etc) in sys_call_table with special wrapper
entries provided by "suspend to RAM/DISK" subsystem, which will delay
I/O requests if appropriate.
3. When devices are quiesced, they are put into "low power" state and
system is put into suspend state; or the image is written to disk
(through snapshot/uswsusp or kexeced kernel).
4. After resuming from RAM/DISK, devices are put into "normal" state and
the syscall entries replaced in step 2 are restored.

Best Regards,
Huang Ying