Re: [RFC][PATCH] PM: Introduce new top level suspend andhibernation callbacks (rev. 6)

[Nigel Cunningham]

Hi Rafael.

Please excuse me, but I'm going to ask the questions you get from
someone who hasn't followed development to date, and is thus reading the
explanation without prior knowledge. Hopefully that will be helpful when
you come to finalising the commit message.

On Mon, 2008-03-31 at 23:29 +0200, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> From: Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@xxxxxxx>
> 
> Introduce 'struct pm_ops' and 'struct pm_ext_ops' representing
> suspend and hibernation operations for bus types, device classes and
> device types.

Does ..._ext_... mean extended? (external?) If 'extended' (or if not),
does that imply that they're mutually exclusive alternatives for drivers
to use?

> Modify the PM core to use 'struct pm_ops' and 'struct pm_ext_ops'
> objects, if defined, instead of the ->suspend() and ->resume() or,
> respectively, ->suspend_late() and ->resume_early() callbacks that
> will be considered as legacy and gradually phased out.

'Respectively' doesn't look like the right word to use, but I'm not sure
I understand correctly what you're trying to say. The way it's written
at the moment, it sounds to me like you're saying that suspend_late()
and resume_early are deprecated, but you're modifying the PM core to use
them.

> Change the behavior of the PM core wrt the error codes returned by
> device drivers' ->resume() callbacks.  Namely, if an error code
> is returned by one of them, the device for which it's been returned
> is regarded as "invalid" by the PM core which will refuse to handle
> it from that point on (in particualr, suspend/hibernation will not
> be started if there is an "invalid" device in the system).

s/ïparticualr,/particular

So drivers can never validly fail to resume. That sounds fair enough. If
the hardware has gone away while in lower power mode (USB, say), should
the driver then just printk an error and return success?

> The main purpose of doing this is to separate suspend (aka S2RAM and
> standby) callbacks from hibernation callbacks in such a way that the
> new callbacks won't take arguments and the semantics of each of them
> will be clearly specified.  This has been requested for multiple
> times by many people, including Linus himself, and the reason is that
> within the current scheme if ->resume() is called, for example, it's
> difficult to say why it's been called (ie. is it a resume from RAM or
> from hibernation or a suspend/hibernation failure etc.?).
> 
> The second purpose is to make the suspend/hibernation callbacks more
> flexible so that device drivers can handle more than they can within
> the current scheme.  For example, some drivers may need to prevent
> new children of the device from being registered before their
> ->suspend() callbacks are executed or they may want to carry out some
> operations requiring the availability of some other devices, not
> directly bound via the parent-child relationship, in order to prepare
> for the execution of ->suspend(), etc.

Do these changes allow for other power state possibilities besides
suspend to ram and hibernate (eg on other platforms)?

> Ultimately, we'd like to stop using the freezing of tasks for suspend
> and therefore the drivers' suspend/hibernation code will have to take
> care of the handling of the user space during suspend/hibernation.
> That, in turn, would be difficult within the current scheme, without
> the new ->prepare() and ->complete() callbacks.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@xxxxxxx>
> ---
> 
>  arch/x86/kernel/apm_32.c   |    4 
>  drivers/base/power/main.c  |  706 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-----------
>  drivers/base/power/power.h |    2 
>  drivers/base/power/trace.c |    4 
>  include/linux/device.h     |    9 
>  include/linux/pm.h         |  318 ++++++++++++++++++--
>  kernel/power/disk.c        |   20 -
>  kernel/power/main.c        |    6 
>  8 files changed, 870 insertions(+), 199 deletions(-)
> 
> Index: linux-2.6/include/linux/pm.h
> ===================================================================
> --- linux-2.6.orig/include/linux/pm.h
> +++ linux-2.6/include/linux/pm.h
> @@ -114,7 +114,9 @@ typedef struct pm_message {
>  	int event;
>  } pm_message_t;
>  
> -/*
> +/**
> + * struct pm_ops - device PM callbacks
> + *
>   * Several driver power state transitions are externally visible, affecting
>   * the state of pending I/O queues and (for drivers that touch hardware)
>   * interrupts, wakeups, DMA, and other hardware state.  There may also be
> @@ -122,6 +124,288 @@ typedef struct pm_message {
>   * to the rest of the driver stack (such as a driver that's ON gating off
>   * clocks which are not in active use).
>   *
> + * The externally visible transitions are handled with the help of the following
> + * callbacks included in this structure:
> + *
> + * @prepare: Prepare the device for the upcoming transition, but do NOT change
> + *	its hardware state.  Prevent new children of the device from being
> + *	registered after @prepare() returns (the driver's subsystem and
> + *	generally the rest of the kernel is supposed to prevent new calls to the
> + *	probe method from being made too once @prepare() has succeeded).  If
> + *	@prepare() detects a situation it cannot handle (e.g. registration of a
> + *	child already in progress), it may return -EAGAIN, so that the PM core
> + *	can execute it once again (e.g. after the new child has been registered)
> + *	to recover from the race condition.  This method is executed for all
> + *	kinds of suspend transitions and is followed by one of the suspend
> + *	callbacks: @suspend(), @freeze(), or @poweroff().
> + *	The PM core executes @prepare() for all devices before starting to
> + *	execute suspend callbacks for any of them, so drivers may assume all of
> + *	the other devices to be present and functional while @prepare() is being
> + *	executed.  In particular, it is safe to make GFP_KERNEL memory
> + *	allocations from within @prepare(), although they are likely to fail in
> + *	case of hibernation, if a substantial amount of memory is requested.

Why?

> + *	However, drivers may NOT assume anything about the availability of the
> + *	user space at that time and it is not correct to request firmware from
> + *	within @prepare() (it's too late to do that).

That doesn't sound good. It would be good to be able to get drivers to
request firmware early in the process.

> + * @complete: Undo the changes made by @prepare().  This method is executed for
> + *	all kinds of resume transitions, following one of the resume callbacks:
> + *	@resume(), @thaw(), @restore().  Also called if the state transition
> + *	fails before the driver's suspend callback (@suspend(), @freeze(),
> + *	@poweroff()) can be executed (e.g. if the suspend callback fails for one
> + *	of the other devices that the PM core has unsucessfully attempted to

s/ïunsucessfully/ïunsuccessfully

Regards,

Nigel


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