Re: [PATCH 1/8] PM: Opportunistic suspend support.

Rafael J. Wysocki
2010-05-26T22:45:56Z

On Thursday 27 May 2010, Alan Stern wrote:
> On Wed, 26 May 2010, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
>
> > > The reason is simple: When a user process initiates an opportunistic
> > > suspend, you make it wait in an interruptible sleep until all the
> > > kernel suspend blockers are released. No polling. If another user
> > > thread decides in the meantime that it needs to block the suspend, it
> > > sends a signal to the power manager process.
> > >
> > > In fact, other threads should signal the power manager process whenever
> > > they want to block or unblock suspends. That way the power manager
> > > process can spend all its time sleeping, without doing any polling.
> >
> > I still see an issue here. Namely, if the power manager is in user space and
> > it's signaled to suspend, it has to ask the kernel to do that, presumably by
> > writing something to a sysfs file. Then, if the kernel blocks the suspend, the
> > power manager waits until the block is released. Now, it should go back and
> > check if user space still doesn't block suspend and if so, wait until the block
> > is released and start over. With all suspend blockers in the kernel this
> > looping behavior is avoidable.
>
> I must be missing something. In Arve's patch 1/8, if the system is in
> opportunistic suspend, and a wakeup event occurs but no suspend
> blockers get enabled by the handler, what causes the system to go back
> into suspend after the event is handled? Isn't that a loop of some
> sort?

Well, yes it is.

Rafael