Re: unparseable, undocumented /sys/class/drm/.../pstate

Greg KH
2014-06-21T19:45:57Z

On Sat, Jun 21, 2014 at 02:22:59PM -0400, Ilia Mirkin wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 21, 2014 at 2:02 PM, Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz> wrote:
> > Hi!
> >
> > AFAICT, pstate file will contain something like
> >
> > 07: core 100 MHz memory 123 MHz *
> > 08: core 100-200 MHz memory 123 MHz
> >
> > ...which does not look exactly like one-value-per-file, and I'm pretty
> > sure userspace will get it wrong if it tries to parse it. Plus, I
> > don't see required documentation in Documentation/ABI.
> >
> > Should we disable it for now, so that userspace does not start
> > depending on it and we'll not have to maintain it forever?
> >
> > I guess better interface would be something like
> >
> > pstate/07/core_clock_min
> > core_clock_max
> > memory_clock_min
> > memory_clock_max
> >
> > and then pstate/active containing just the number of active state?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Pavel
> >
> > PS: I have no nvidia, got the news at
> >
> > http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nouveau_try_linux316&num=2
>
> FTR, this file has been in place since 3.13, and there was a different
> file before it (performance_levels), with a comparable format since
> much earlier (definitely 3.8, probably earlier). I think it's meant a
> lot more for people looking at it and echo'ing stuff to it to modify
> the levels (where supported), than for programs parsing it. Perhaps
> sysfs is the wrong place for this -- what is the right place? debugfs?

Yes, please move it to debugfs.

greg k-h