What's in store for 2008 for TuxOnIce?

What's in store for 2008 for TuxOnIce?

[Nigel Cunningham]

Hi all.

With the start of a new year, I suppose it's a good time to think about
what I'd like to do with TuxOnIce this year and see what feedback I get.

First up, I'm thinking about closing the mailing lists and asking people
to use LKML instead for reporting issues and so on. I'm thinking about
this because it will help with allowing people who work on mainline to
see how stable (or otherwise!) TuxOnIce is now. It should also help when
(as often happens) bug reports aren't actually issues with the patch,
but with vanilla (ie drivers). Perhaps it will also help with whatever
effort I find time to make towards convincing Andrew that it really does
have significant advantages over [u]swsusp and kexec based hibernation.

Secondly, I'm planning on moving the website soonish. It's taken longer
than I planned because it will be sharing with another server I'm
maintaining, and it has taken longer than expected to find good hosting
for the other server (which was done first). Now that I'm happy with the
other server's state, I'm hoping to start shifting
suspend2.net/tuxonice.net soon.

For those who might be looking for hosting themselves, I'm using
slicehost. I initially tried GoDaddy, but had terrible service, problems
with draconian limits on the volume of outgoing email (1000/day by
default - useless if you're doing mailing lists) and unexpected,
unexplained delays in mail delivery through the SMTP delay they force
you to use. Slicehost, on the other hand, are terrific to deal with in
everyway. If you sign up with them because of this email, please
consider putting my email (nigel at suspend2.net) as the referrer - I
then get a discount on the cost of the hosting.

Third, regarding the patch itself, I'm taking my time in working towards
the 3.0 release. We don't have any major bugs with 3.0-rc3 reported, but
I have some things I want to complete before the final release:
* see it well tested;
* get a finished initial version of the cluster support;
* finish completing support for the new resume-from-other kernels
functionality that Rafael has added in 2.6.24. (We can resume from the
same kernel at the moment, but I need to convince myself that nosave
data is properly handled).

Regards,

Nigel

Re: What's in store for 2008 for TuxOnIce?

[Rafael J. Wysocki]

On Tuesday, 1 of January 2008, Nigel Cunningham wrote:
> Hi all.

Hi Nigel,

> With the start of a new year, I suppose it's a good time to think about
> what I'd like to do with TuxOnIce this year and see what feedback I get.
> 
> First up, I'm thinking about closing the mailing lists and asking people
> to use LKML instead for reporting issues and so on. I'm thinking about
> this because it will help with allowing people who work on mainline to
> see how stable (or otherwise!) TuxOnIce is now. It should also help when
> (as often happens) bug reports aren't actually issues with the patch,
> but with vanilla (ie drivers).

I would also like the TuxOnIce issues related to drivers, ACPI, etc. to go to
one of the kernel-related lists, but I think linux-pm may be better for that
due to the much lower traffic.

> Perhaps it will also help with whatever effort I find time to make towards
> convincing Andrew that it really does have significant advantages over
> [u]swsusp and kexec based hibernation. 
> 
> Secondly, I'm planning on moving the website soonish. It's taken longer
> than I planned because it will be sharing with another server I'm
> maintaining, and it has taken longer than expected to find good hosting
> for the other server (which was done first). Now that I'm happy with the
> other server's state, I'm hoping to start shifting
> suspend2.net/tuxonice.net soon.
> 
> For those who might be looking for hosting themselves, I'm using
> slicehost. I initially tried GoDaddy, but had terrible service, problems
> with draconian limits on the volume of outgoing email (1000/day by
> default - useless if you're doing mailing lists) and unexpected,
> unexplained delays in mail delivery through the SMTP delay they force
> you to use. Slicehost, on the other hand, are terrific to deal with in
> everyway. If you sign up with them because of this email, please
> consider putting my email (nigel at suspend2.net) as the referrer - I
> then get a discount on the cost of the hosting.
> 
> Third, regarding the patch itself, I'm taking my time in working towards
> the 3.0 release. We don't have any major bugs with 3.0-rc3 reported, but
> I have some things I want to complete before the final release:
> * see it well tested;
> * get a finished initial version of the cluster support;
> * finish completing support for the new resume-from-other kernels
> functionality that Rafael has added in 2.6.24. (We can resume from the
> same kernel at the moment, but I need to convince myself that nosave
> data is properly handled).

Have you finished the support for freezing filesystems before freezing tasks
that we talked about some time ago?

Greetings,
Rafael

Freezing filesystems (Was Re: What's in store for 2008 for TuxOnIce?)

[Nigel Cunningham]

Hi.

Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> On Tuesday, 1 of January 2008, Nigel Cunningham wrote:
>> Hi all.
> 
> Hi Nigel,

Gidday :)

>> With the start of a new year, I suppose it's a good time to think about
>> what I'd like to do with TuxOnIce this year and see what feedback I get.
>>
>> First up, I'm thinking about closing the mailing lists and asking people
>> to use LKML instead for reporting issues and so on. I'm thinking about
>> this because it will help with allowing people who work on mainline to
>> see how stable (or otherwise!) TuxOnIce is now. It should also help when
>> (as often happens) bug reports aren't actually issues with the patch,
>> but with vanilla (ie drivers).
> 
> I would also like the TuxOnIce issues related to drivers, ACPI, etc. to go to
> one of the kernel-related lists, but I think linux-pm may be better for that
> due to the much lower traffic.

I guess that makes sense. I guess people can always be referred to LKML
for the issues where the appropriate person isn't on linux-pm.

>> Perhaps it will also help with whatever effort I find time to make towards
>> convincing Andrew that it really does have significant advantages over
>> [u]swsusp and kexec based hibernation. 
>>
>> Secondly, I'm planning on moving the website soonish. It's taken longer
>> than I planned because it will be sharing with another server I'm
>> maintaining, and it has taken longer than expected to find good hosting
>> for the other server (which was done first). Now that I'm happy with the
>> other server's state, I'm hoping to start shifting
>> suspend2.net/tuxonice.net soon.
>>
>> For those who might be looking for hosting themselves, I'm using
>> slicehost. I initially tried GoDaddy, but had terrible service, problems
>> with draconian limits on the volume of outgoing email (1000/day by
>> default - useless if you're doing mailing lists) and unexpected,
>> unexplained delays in mail delivery through the SMTP delay they force
>> you to use. Slicehost, on the other hand, are terrific to deal with in
>> everyway. If you sign up with them because of this email, please
>> consider putting my email (nigel at suspend2.net) as the referrer - I
>> then get a discount on the cost of the hosting.
>>
>> Third, regarding the patch itself, I'm taking my time in working towards
>> the 3.0 release. We don't have any major bugs with 3.0-rc3 reported, but
>> I have some things I want to complete before the final release:
>> * see it well tested;
>> * get a finished initial version of the cluster support;
>> * finish completing support for the new resume-from-other kernels
>> functionality that Rafael has added in 2.6.24. (We can resume from the
>> same kernel at the moment, but I need to convince myself that nosave
>> data is properly handled).
> 
> Have you finished the support for freezing filesystems before freezing tasks
> that we talked about some time ago?

Hmm. I've had too many things going through my little brain since then.
What I currently have is support for freezing fuse filesystems
separately. It looks like:

int freeze_processes(void)
{
        int error;

        printk("Stopping fuse filesystems.\n");
        freeze_filesystems(FS_FREEZER_FUSE);
        freezer_state = FREEZER_FILESYSTEMS_FROZEN;
        printk("Freezing user space processes ... ");
        error = try_to_freeze_tasks(FREEZER_USER_SPACE);
        if (error)
                goto Exit;
        printk("done.\n");

        sys_sync();
        printk("Stopping normal filesystems.\n");
        freeze_filesystems(FS_FREEZER_NORMAL);
        freezer_state = FREEZER_USERSPACE_FROZEN;
        printk("Freezing remaining freezable tasks ... ");
        error = try_to_freeze_tasks(FREEZER_KERNEL_THREADS);
        if (error)
                goto Exit;
        printk("done.");
        freezer_state = FREEZER_FULLY_ON;
 Exit:
        BUG_ON(in_atomic());
        printk("\n");
        return error;
}

(I'm not yet worrying about ext3 on fuse or such like, but it shouldn't
be hard to extend the model to do that).

Nigel

Re: [Suspend2-devel] Freezing filesystems (Was Re: What's in store for 2008 for TuxOnIce?)

[Nigel Cunningham]

Hi Ted.

Theodore Tso wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 02, 2008 at 10:54:18AM +1100, Nigel Cunningham wrote:
>>> I would also like the TuxOnIce issues related to drivers, ACPI, etc. to go to
>>> one of the kernel-related lists, but I think linux-pm may be better for that
>>> due to the much lower traffic.
>> I guess that makes sense. I guess people can always be referred to LKML
>> for the issues where the appropriate person isn't on linux-pm.
> 
> Hi Nigel,
> 
> I'd really recommend pushing the TuxOnIce discussions to LKML.  That
> way people can see the size of the user community and Andrew and Linus
> can see how many people are using TuxOnIce.  They can also see how
> well the TuxOnIce community helps address user problems, which is a
> big consideration when Linus decides whether or not to merge a
> particular technology. 
> 
> If the goal is eventual merger of TuxOnIce, LKML is really the best
> place to have the discussions.  Examples such as Realtime, CFS, and
> others have shown that you really want to keep the discussion front
> and center.  When one developer says, "not my problem; my code is
> perfect", and the other developer is working with users who report
> problems, guess which technology generally ends up getting merged by
> Linus?

Yes. The goal is eventual merger. That's what I was thinking too. Thanks
for the input!

Nigel

Re: Freezing filesystems (Was Re: What's in store for 2008 for TuxOnIce?)

[Bill Davidsen]

Theodore Tso wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 02, 2008 at 10:54:18AM +1100, Nigel Cunningham wrote:
>>> I would also like the TuxOnIce issues related to drivers, ACPI, etc. to go to
>>> one of the kernel-related lists, but I think linux-pm may be better for that
>>> due to the much lower traffic.
>> I guess that makes sense. I guess people can always be referred to LKML
>> for the issues where the appropriate person isn't on linux-pm.
> 
> Hi Nigel,
> 
> I'd really recommend pushing the TuxOnIce discussions to LKML.  That
> way people can see the size of the user community and Andrew and Linus
> can see how many people are using TuxOnIce.  They can also see how
> well the TuxOnIce community helps address user problems, which is a
> big consideration when Linus decides whether or not to merge a
> particular technology. 
> 
> If the goal is eventual merger of TuxOnIce, LKML is really the best
> place to have the discussions.  Examples such as Realtime, CFS, and
> others have shown that you really want to keep the discussion front
> and center.  When one developer says, "not my problem; my code is
> perfect", and the other developer is working with users who report
> problems, guess which technology generally ends up getting merged by
> Linus?
> 
Judging from the fact that TuxOnIce is still excluded, I would say the 
answer is obvious. :-(
Posession is nine points of the law...

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot

Re: [Suspend2-devel] Freezing filesystems (Was Re: What's in store for 2008 for TuxOnIce?)

[Nigel Cunningham]

Hi.

Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> On Wednesday, 2 of January 2008, Theodore Tso wrote:
>> On Wed, Jan 02, 2008 at 10:54:18AM +1100, Nigel Cunningham wrote:
>>>> I would also like the TuxOnIce issues related to drivers, ACPI, etc. to go to
>>>> one of the kernel-related lists, but I think linux-pm may be better for that
>>>> due to the much lower traffic.
>>> I guess that makes sense. I guess people can always be referred to LKML
>>> for the issues where the appropriate person isn't on linux-pm.
>> Hi Nigel,
>>
>> I'd really recommend pushing the TuxOnIce discussions to LKML.
> 
> CCing linux-pm (or even linux-acpi) on problem reports would still be
> recommended, though. :-)

Right. And that may make things easier as far as TuxOnIce users go too.
I have one user who currently subscribes to suspend2-users who already
tried subscribing to LKML and said he didn't like the experience. Using
linux-pm instead would save some pain there.

Nigel

Re: [Suspend2-users] [Suspend2-devel] Freezing filesystems (Was Re: What's in store for 2008 for TuxOnIce?)

[Nigel Cunningham]

Hi Martin.

Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> Am Mittwoch 02 Januar 2008 schrieb Nigel Cunningham:
>> Hi.
> 
> Hi,
> 
>> Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, 2 of January 2008, Theodore Tso wrote:
>>>> On Wed, Jan 02, 2008 at 10:54:18AM +1100, Nigel Cunningham
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> I would also like the TuxOnIce issues related to drivers,
>>>>>> ACPI, etc. to go to one of the kernel-related lists, but I
>>>>>> think linux-pm may be better for that due to the much lower
>>>>>> traffic.
>>>>> I guess that makes sense. I guess people can always be
>>>>> referred to LKML for the issues where the appropriate person
>>>>> isn't on linux-pm.
>>>> Hi Nigel,
>>>> 
>>>> I'd really recommend pushing the TuxOnIce discussions to LKML.
>>> CCing linux-pm (or even linux-acpi) on problem reports would
>>> still be recommended, though. :-)
>> Right. And that may make things easier as far as TuxOnIce users go
>> too. I have one user who currently subscribes to suspend2-users who
>> already tried subscribing to LKML and said he didn't like the
>> experience. Using linux-pm instead would save some pain there.
> 
> I am a bit reluctant about LKML from some of the discussions I have
> seen there and participated in during CFS / CK discussion. I really
> didn't like the tone. Its one thing to say ones own oppinion, another
> one to bash at each other as if there was no tomorrow.
> 
> This has been refreshingly different on tuxonice mailing lists. I am
> also a bit reluctant about the traffic. I already have some quite
> high traffic mailinglists with 30000-40000 mails a year, but LKML
> would top these easily I guess and I am not that sure I want to put
> that load on my mail infrastructure to follow TuxOnIce developments.
> I think this is a generic problem for testers of specific kernel
> subsystems...
> 
> But then LKML is were TuxOnIce is visible to the kernel developer 
> community.
> 
> I would appreciate linux-pm I think maybe with a guideline to CC to
> LKML in usual cases...

Thanks for your feedback. I think that's the way to go.

> BTW: toi-3.0-rc3 is rocking along nicely on my two ThinkPads (T42 and
>  T23)... I am using 2.6.23.12 with cfs-v24.1...

Great to hear!

Nigel

Reboot problem (was: Re: [Suspend2-devel] What's in store for 2008 for TuxOnIce?)

[Christian Hesse]

On Tuesday 01 January 2008, Nigel Cunningham wrote:
> Third, regarding the patch itself, I'm taking my time in working towards
> the 3.0 release. We don't have any major bugs with 3.0-rc3 reported [...].

Well, I think I still have a bug, though it is possibly a mainline problem and 
it's not a showstopper. After a suspend/resume cycle the reboot does not 
work. The system hangs with "Rebooting system" (or similar). After that you 
have to hard reset the system, which is not really a problem as filesystems 
have been unmounted before. Reboot without a suspend cycle before and halt 
with and without suspend cycle work without problems.
I'm using toi 3.0-rc3 with kernel 2.6.24-rc6 and beside the problem described 
above I'm really happy with toi.

Happy new your to everybody!
-- 
Regards,
Chris

Re: [Suspend2-devel] Reboot problem

[Nigel Cunningham]

Hi Christian.

Christian Hesse wrote:
> On Tuesday 01 January 2008, Nigel Cunningham wrote:
>> Third, regarding the patch itself, I'm taking my time in working towards
>> the 3.0 release. We don't have any major bugs with 3.0-rc3 reported [...].
> 
> Well, I think I still have a bug, though it is possibly a mainline problem and 
> it's not a showstopper. After a suspend/resume cycle the reboot does not 
> work. The system hangs with "Rebooting system" (or similar). After that you 
> have to hard reset the system, which is not really a problem as filesystems 
> have been unmounted before. Reboot without a suspend cycle before and halt 
> with and without suspend cycle work without problems.

Just to clarify, do you mean rebooting after writing an image, or
shutting down and rebooting? It could be that there's some change to the
semantics in 2.6.24 that I haven't noticed yet.

> I'm using toi 3.0-rc3 with kernel 2.6.24-rc6 and beside the problem described 
> above I'm really happy with toi.
> 
> Happy new your to everybody!

And to you too!

Nigel

Re: [Suspend2-devel] Reboot problem

[Christian Hesse]

On Wednesday 02 January 2008, Nigel Cunningham wrote:
> Hi Christian.
>
> Christian Hesse wrote:
> > On Tuesday 01 January 2008, Nigel Cunningham wrote:
> >> Third, regarding the patch itself, I'm taking my time in working towards
> >> the 3.0 release. We don't have any major bugs with 3.0-rc3 reported
> >> [...].
> >
> > Well, I think I still have a bug, though it is possibly a mainline
> > problem and it's not a showstopper. After a suspend/resume cycle the
> > reboot does not work. The system hangs with "Rebooting system" (or
> > similar). After that you have to hard reset the system, which is not
> > really a problem as filesystems have been unmounted before. Reboot
> > without a suspend cycle before and halt with and without suspend cycle
> > work without problems.
>
> Just to clarify, do you mean rebooting after writing an image, or
> shutting down and rebooting? It could be that there's some change to the
> semantics in 2.6.24 that I haven't noticed yet.

I speak about shutting down and rebooting. I have not used reboot after 
writing an image for a long time now. Will test what happens in this case.

I had the issue before 2.6.24(-rc) already, thought I don't know whether there 
were times it worked. I use it way too seldom.
-- 
Regards,
Chris

Re: [Suspend2-devel] Reboot problem

[Rafael J. Wysocki]

On Wednesday, 2 of January 2008, Christian Hesse wrote:
> On Wednesday 02 January 2008, Nigel Cunningham wrote:
> > Hi Christian.
> >
> > Christian Hesse wrote:
> > > On Tuesday 01 January 2008, Nigel Cunningham wrote:
> > >> Third, regarding the patch itself, I'm taking my time in working towards
> > >> the 3.0 release. We don't have any major bugs with 3.0-rc3 reported
> > >> [...].
> > >
> > > Well, I think I still have a bug, though it is possibly a mainline
> > > problem and it's not a showstopper. After a suspend/resume cycle the
> > > reboot does not work. The system hangs with "Rebooting system" (or
> > > similar). After that you have to hard reset the system, which is not
> > > really a problem as filesystems have been unmounted before. Reboot
> > > without a suspend cycle before and halt with and without suspend cycle
> > > work without problems.
> >
> > Just to clarify, do you mean rebooting after writing an image, or
> > shutting down and rebooting? It could be that there's some change to the
> > semantics in 2.6.24 that I haven't noticed yet.
> 
> I speak about shutting down and rebooting. I have not used reboot after 
> writing an image for a long time now. Will test what happens in this case.
> 
> I had the issue before 2.6.24(-rc) already, thought I don't know whether there 
> were times it worked. I use it way too seldom.

Well, this is similar to http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6655 ,
which definitely is a mainline problem (still pending).

Greetings,
Rafael\

Re: [Suspend2-devel] Reboot problem

[Christian Hesse]

On Wednesday 02 January 2008, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> On Wednesday, 2 of January 2008, Christian Hesse wrote:
> > On Wednesday 02 January 2008, Nigel Cunningham wrote:
> > > Hi Christian.
> > >
> > > Christian Hesse wrote:
> > > > On Tuesday 01 January 2008, Nigel Cunningham wrote:
> > > >> Third, regarding the patch itself, I'm taking my time in working
> > > >> towards the 3.0 release. We don't have any major bugs with 3.0-rc3
> > > >> reported [...].
> > > >
> > > > Well, I think I still have a bug, though it is possibly a mainline
> > > > problem and it's not a showstopper. After a suspend/resume cycle the
> > > > reboot does not work. The system hangs with "Rebooting system" (or
> > > > similar). After that you have to hard reset the system, which is not
> > > > really a problem as filesystems have been unmounted before. Reboot
> > > > without a suspend cycle before and halt with and without suspend
> > > > cycle work without problems.
> > >
> > > Just to clarify, do you mean rebooting after writing an image, or
> > > shutting down and rebooting? It could be that there's some change to
> > > the semantics in 2.6.24 that I haven't noticed yet.
> >
> > I speak about shutting down and rebooting. I have not used reboot after
> > writing an image for a long time now. Will test what happens in this
> > case.

Reboot after writing image does not work, too. The system hangs with "Ready to 
reboot".

> > I had the issue before 2.6.24(-rc) already, thought I don't know whether
> > there were times it worked. I use it way too seldom.
>
> Well, this is similar to http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6655 ,
> which definitely is a mainline problem (still pending).

Yes, that sound like my problem. I will test the patches and keep the bug 
report in focus.
-- 
Regards,
Chris

Re: [Suspend2-devel] What's in store for 2008 for TuxOnIce?

[Gnata Xavier]

Hi Nigel,

I do agree with all your plans ;)
I'm also happy with the current version of tuxonice.
The main question is :
"What is the status of merging into mainline" (with or without any 
additional patch from other suspend patch).
I have seen quite a lot of mails about this topic on the lmkl in 2007... ;)

Xavier

> Hi all.
>
> With the start of a new year, I suppose it's a good time to think about
> what I'd like to do with TuxOnIce this year and see what feedback I get.
>
> First up, I'm thinking about closing the mailing lists and asking people
> to use LKML instead for reporting issues and so on. I'm thinking about
> this because it will help with allowing people who work on mainline to
> see how stable (or otherwise!) TuxOnIce is now. It should also help when
> (as often happens) bug reports aren't actually issues with the patch,
> but with vanilla (ie drivers). Perhaps it will also help with whatever
> effort I find time to make towards convincing Andrew that it really does
> have significant advantages over [u]swsusp and kexec based hibernation.
>
> Secondly, I'm planning on moving the website soonish. It's taken longer
> than I planned because it will be sharing with another server I'm
> maintaining, and it has taken longer than expected to find good hosting
> for the other server (which was done first). Now that I'm happy with the
> other server's state, I'm hoping to start shifting
> suspend2.net/tuxonice.net soon.
>
> For those who might be looking for hosting themselves, I'm using
> slicehost. I initially tried GoDaddy, but had terrible service, problems
> with draconian limits on the volume of outgoing email (1000/day by
> default - useless if you're doing mailing lists) and unexpected,
> unexplained delays in mail delivery through the SMTP delay they force
> you to use. Slicehost, on the other hand, are terrific to deal with in
> everyway. If you sign up with them because of this email, please
> consider putting my email (nigel at suspend2.net) as the referrer - I
> then get a discount on the cost of the hosting.
>
> Third, regarding the patch itself, I'm taking my time in working towards
> the 3.0 release. We don't have any major bugs with 3.0-rc3 reported, but
> I have some things I want to complete before the final release:
> * see it well tested;
> * get a finished initial version of the cluster support;
> * finish completing support for the new resume-from-other kernels
> functionality that Rafael has added in 2.6.24. (We can resume from the
> same kernel at the moment, but I need to convince myself that nosave
> data is properly handled).
>
> Regards,
>
> Nigel
>
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>