aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/Documentation/power/swsusp.txt
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/power/swsusp.txt')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/power/swsusp.txt408
1 files changed, 408 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/power/swsusp.txt b/Documentation/power/swsusp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..ac190cf1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/power/swsusp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,408 @@
+Some warnings, first.
+
+ * BIG FAT WARNING *********************************************************
+ *
+ * If you touch anything on disk between suspend and resume...
+ * ...kiss your data goodbye.
+ *
+ * If you do resume from initrd after your filesystems are mounted...
+ * ...bye bye root partition.
+ * [this is actually same case as above]
+ *
+ * If you have unsupported (*) devices using DMA, you may have some
+ * problems. If your disk driver does not support suspend... (IDE does),
+ * it may cause some problems, too. If you change kernel command line
+ * between suspend and resume, it may do something wrong. If you change
+ * your hardware while system is suspended... well, it was not good idea;
+ * but it will probably only crash.
+ *
+ * (*) suspend/resume support is needed to make it safe.
+ *
+ * If you have any filesystems on USB devices mounted before software suspend,
+ * they won't be accessible after resume and you may lose data, as though
+ * you have unplugged the USB devices with mounted filesystems on them;
+ * see the FAQ below for details. (This is not true for more traditional
+ * power states like "standby", which normally don't turn USB off.)
+
+You need to append resume=/dev/your_swap_partition to kernel command
+line. Then you suspend by
+
+echo shutdown > /sys/power/disk; echo disk > /sys/power/state
+
+. If you feel ACPI works pretty well on your system, you might try
+
+echo platform > /sys/power/disk; echo disk > /sys/power/state
+
+. If you have SATA disks, you'll need recent kernels with SATA suspend
+support. For suspend and resume to work, make sure your disk drivers
+are built into kernel -- not modules. [There's way to make
+suspend/resume with modular disk drivers, see FAQ, but you probably
+should not do that.]
+
+If you want to limit the suspend image size to N bytes, do
+
+echo N > /sys/power/image_size
+
+before suspend (it is limited to 500 MB by default).
+
+
+Article about goals and implementation of Software Suspend for Linux
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+Author: G‚ábor Kuti
+Last revised: 2003-10-20 by Pavel Machek
+
+Idea and goals to achieve
+
+Nowadays it is common in several laptops that they have a suspend button. It
+saves the state of the machine to a filesystem or to a partition and switches
+to standby mode. Later resuming the machine the saved state is loaded back to
+ram and the machine can continue its work. It has two real benefits. First we
+save ourselves the time machine goes down and later boots up, energy costs
+are real high when running from batteries. The other gain is that we don't have to
+interrupt our programs so processes that are calculating something for a long
+time shouldn't need to be written interruptible.
+
+swsusp saves the state of the machine into active swaps and then reboots or
+powerdowns. You must explicitly specify the swap partition to resume from with
+``resume='' kernel option. If signature is found it loads and restores saved
+state. If the option ``noresume'' is specified as a boot parameter, it skips
+the resuming. If the option ``hibernate=nocompress'' is specified as a boot
+parameter, it saves hibernation image without compression.
+
+In the meantime while the system is suspended you should not add/remove any
+of the hardware, write to the filesystems, etc.
+
+Sleep states summary
+====================
+
+There are three different interfaces you can use, /proc/acpi should
+work like this:
+
+In a really perfect world:
+echo 1 > /proc/acpi/sleep # for standby
+echo 2 > /proc/acpi/sleep # for suspend to ram
+echo 3 > /proc/acpi/sleep # for suspend to ram, but with more power conservative
+echo 4 > /proc/acpi/sleep # for suspend to disk
+echo 5 > /proc/acpi/sleep # for shutdown unfriendly the system
+
+and perhaps
+echo 4b > /proc/acpi/sleep # for suspend to disk via s4bios
+
+Frequently Asked Questions
+==========================
+
+Q: well, suspending a server is IMHO a really stupid thing,
+but... (Diego Zuccato):
+
+A: You bought new UPS for your server. How do you install it without
+bringing machine down? Suspend to disk, rearrange power cables,
+resume.
+
+You have your server on UPS. Power died, and UPS is indicating 30
+seconds to failure. What do you do? Suspend to disk.
+
+
+Q: Maybe I'm missing something, but why don't the regular I/O paths work?
+
+A: We do use the regular I/O paths. However we cannot restore the data
+to its original location as we load it. That would create an
+inconsistent kernel state which would certainly result in an oops.
+Instead, we load the image into unused memory and then atomically copy
+it back to it original location. This implies, of course, a maximum
+image size of half the amount of memory.
+
+There are two solutions to this:
+
+* require half of memory to be free during suspend. That way you can
+read "new" data onto free spots, then cli and copy
+
+* assume we had special "polling" ide driver that only uses memory
+between 0-640KB. That way, I'd have to make sure that 0-640KB is free
+during suspending, but otherwise it would work...
+
+suspend2 shares this fundamental limitation, but does not include user
+data and disk caches into "used memory" by saving them in
+advance. That means that the limitation goes away in practice.
+
+Q: Does linux support ACPI S4?
+
+A: Yes. That's what echo platform > /sys/power/disk does.
+
+Q: What is 'suspend2'?
+
+A: suspend2 is 'Software Suspend 2', a forked implementation of
+suspend-to-disk which is available as separate patches for 2.4 and 2.6
+kernels from swsusp.sourceforge.net. It includes support for SMP, 4GB
+highmem and preemption. It also has a extensible architecture that
+allows for arbitrary transformations on the image (compression,
+encryption) and arbitrary backends for writing the image (eg to swap
+or an NFS share[Work In Progress]). Questions regarding suspend2
+should be sent to the mailing list available through the suspend2
+website, and not to the Linux Kernel Mailing List. We are working
+toward merging suspend2 into the mainline kernel.
+
+Q: What is the freezing of tasks and why are we using it?
+
+A: The freezing of tasks is a mechanism by which user space processes and some
+kernel threads are controlled during hibernation or system-wide suspend (on some
+architectures). See freezing-of-tasks.txt for details.
+
+Q: What is the difference between "platform" and "shutdown"?
+
+A:
+
+shutdown: save state in linux, then tell bios to powerdown
+
+platform: save state in linux, then tell bios to powerdown and blink
+ "suspended led"
+
+"platform" is actually right thing to do where supported, but
+"shutdown" is most reliable (except on ACPI systems).
+
+Q: I do not understand why you have such strong objections to idea of
+selective suspend.
+
+A: Do selective suspend during runtime power management, that's okay. But
+it's useless for suspend-to-disk. (And I do not see how you could use
+it for suspend-to-ram, I hope you do not want that).
+
+Lets see, so you suggest to
+
+* SUSPEND all but swap device and parents
+* Snapshot
+* Write image to disk
+* SUSPEND swap device and parents
+* Powerdown
+
+Oh no, that does not work, if swap device or its parents uses DMA,
+you've corrupted data. You'd have to do
+
+* SUSPEND all but swap device and parents
+* FREEZE swap device and parents
+* Snapshot
+* UNFREEZE swap device and parents
+* Write
+* SUSPEND swap device and parents
+
+Which means that you still need that FREEZE state, and you get more
+complicated code. (And I have not yet introduce details like system
+devices).
+
+Q: There don't seem to be any generally useful behavioral
+distinctions between SUSPEND and FREEZE.
+
+A: Doing SUSPEND when you are asked to do FREEZE is always correct,
+but it may be unnecessarily slow. If you want your driver to stay simple,
+slowness may not matter to you. It can always be fixed later.
+
+For devices like disk it does matter, you do not want to spindown for
+FREEZE.
+
+Q: After resuming, system is paging heavily, leading to very bad interactivity.
+
+A: Try running
+
+cat `cat /proc/[0-9]*/maps | grep / | sed 's:.* /:/:' | sort -u` > /dev/null
+
+after resume. swapoff -a; swapon -a may also be useful.
+
+Q: What happens to devices during swsusp? They seem to be resumed
+during system suspend?
+
+A: That's correct. We need to resume them if we want to write image to
+disk. Whole sequence goes like
+
+ Suspend part
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ running system, user asks for suspend-to-disk
+
+ user processes are stopped
+
+ suspend(PMSG_FREEZE): devices are frozen so that they don't interfere
+ with state snapshot
+
+ state snapshot: copy of whole used memory is taken with interrupts disabled
+
+ resume(): devices are woken up so that we can write image to swap
+
+ write image to swap
+
+ suspend(PMSG_SUSPEND): suspend devices so that we can power off
+
+ turn the power off
+
+ Resume part
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~
+ (is actually pretty similar)
+
+ running system, user asks for suspend-to-disk
+
+ user processes are stopped (in common case there are none, but with resume-from-initrd, no one knows)
+
+ read image from disk
+
+ suspend(PMSG_FREEZE): devices are frozen so that they don't interfere
+ with image restoration
+
+ image restoration: rewrite memory with image
+
+ resume(): devices are woken up so that system can continue
+
+ thaw all user processes
+
+Q: What is this 'Encrypt suspend image' for?
+
+A: First of all: it is not a replacement for dm-crypt encrypted swap.
+It cannot protect your computer while it is suspended. Instead it does
+protect from leaking sensitive data after resume from suspend.
+
+Think of the following: you suspend while an application is running
+that keeps sensitive data in memory. The application itself prevents
+the data from being swapped out. Suspend, however, must write these
+data to swap to be able to resume later on. Without suspend encryption
+your sensitive data are then stored in plaintext on disk. This means
+that after resume your sensitive data are accessible to all
+applications having direct access to the swap device which was used
+for suspend. If you don't need swap after resume these data can remain
+on disk virtually forever. Thus it can happen that your system gets
+broken in weeks later and sensitive data which you thought were
+encrypted and protected are retrieved and stolen from the swap device.
+To prevent this situation you should use 'Encrypt suspend image'.
+
+During suspend a temporary key is created and this key is used to
+encrypt the data written to disk. When, during resume, the data was
+read back into memory the temporary key is destroyed which simply
+means that all data written to disk during suspend are then
+inaccessible so they can't be stolen later on. The only thing that
+you must then take care of is that you call 'mkswap' for the swap
+partition used for suspend as early as possible during regular
+boot. This asserts that any temporary key from an oopsed suspend or
+from a failed or aborted resume is erased from the swap device.
+
+As a rule of thumb use encrypted swap to protect your data while your
+system is shut down or suspended. Additionally use the encrypted
+suspend image to prevent sensitive data from being stolen after
+resume.
+
+Q: Can I suspend to a swap file?
+
+A: Generally, yes, you can. However, it requires you to use the "resume=" and
+"resume_offset=" kernel command line parameters, so the resume from a swap file
+cannot be initiated from an initrd or initramfs image. See
+swsusp-and-swap-files.txt for details.
+
+Q: Is there a maximum system RAM size that is supported by swsusp?
+
+A: It should work okay with highmem.
+
+Q: Does swsusp (to disk) use only one swap partition or can it use
+multiple swap partitions (aggregate them into one logical space)?
+
+A: Only one swap partition, sorry.
+
+Q: If my application(s) causes lots of memory & swap space to be used
+(over half of the total system RAM), is it correct that it is likely
+to be useless to try to suspend to disk while that app is running?
+
+A: No, it should work okay, as long as your app does not mlock()
+it. Just prepare big enough swap partition.
+
+Q: What information is useful for debugging suspend-to-disk problems?
+
+A: Well, last messages on the screen are always useful. If something
+is broken, it is usually some kernel driver, therefore trying with as
+little as possible modules loaded helps a lot. I also prefer people to
+suspend from console, preferably without X running. Booting with
+init=/bin/bash, then swapon and starting suspend sequence manually
+usually does the trick. Then it is good idea to try with latest
+vanilla kernel.
+
+Q: How can distributions ship a swsusp-supporting kernel with modular
+disk drivers (especially SATA)?
+
+A: Well, it can be done, load the drivers, then do echo into
+/sys/power/disk/resume file from initrd. Be sure not to mount
+anything, not even read-only mount, or you are going to lose your
+data.
+
+Q: How do I make suspend more verbose?
+
+A: If you want to see any non-error kernel messages on the virtual
+terminal the kernel switches to during suspend, you have to set the
+kernel console loglevel to at least 4 (KERN_WARNING), for example by
+doing
+
+ # save the old loglevel
+ read LOGLEVEL DUMMY < /proc/sys/kernel/printk
+ # set the loglevel so we see the progress bar.
+ # if the level is higher than needed, we leave it alone.
+ if [ $LOGLEVEL -lt 5 ]; then
+ echo 5 > /proc/sys/kernel/printk
+ fi
+
+ IMG_SZ=0
+ read IMG_SZ < /sys/power/image_size
+ echo -n disk > /sys/power/state
+ RET=$?
+ #
+ # the logic here is:
+ # if image_size > 0 (without kernel support, IMG_SZ will be zero),
+ # then try again with image_size set to zero.
+ if [ $RET -ne 0 -a $IMG_SZ -ne 0 ]; then # try again with minimal image size
+ echo 0 > /sys/power/image_size
+ echo -n disk > /sys/power/state
+ RET=$?
+ fi
+
+ # restore previous loglevel
+ echo $LOGLEVEL > /proc/sys/kernel/printk
+ exit $RET
+
+Q: Is this true that if I have a mounted filesystem on a USB device and
+I suspend to disk, I can lose data unless the filesystem has been mounted
+with "sync"?
+
+A: That's right ... if you disconnect that device, you may lose data.
+In fact, even with "-o sync" you can lose data if your programs have
+information in buffers they haven't written out to a disk you disconnect,
+or if you disconnect before the device finished saving data you wrote.
+
+Software suspend normally powers down USB controllers, which is equivalent
+to disconnecting all USB devices attached to your system.
+
+Your system might well support low-power modes for its USB controllers
+while the system is asleep, maintaining the connection, using true sleep
+modes like "suspend-to-RAM" or "standby". (Don't write "disk" to the
+/sys/power/state file; write "standby" or "mem".) We've not seen any
+hardware that can use these modes through software suspend, although in
+theory some systems might support "platform" modes that won't break the
+USB connections.
+
+Remember that it's always a bad idea to unplug a disk drive containing a
+mounted filesystem. That's true even when your system is asleep! The
+safest thing is to unmount all filesystems on removable media (such USB,
+Firewire, CompactFlash, MMC, external SATA, or even IDE hotplug bays)
+before suspending; then remount them after resuming.
+
+There is a work-around for this problem. For more information, see
+Documentation/usb/persist.txt.
+
+Q: Can I suspend-to-disk using a swap partition under LVM?
+
+A: No. You can suspend successfully, but you'll not be able to
+resume. uswsusp should be able to work with LVM. See suspend.sf.net.
+
+Q: I upgraded the kernel from 2.6.15 to 2.6.16. Both kernels were
+compiled with the similar configuration files. Anyway I found that
+suspend to disk (and resume) is much slower on 2.6.16 compared to
+2.6.15. Any idea for why that might happen or how can I speed it up?
+
+A: This is because the size of the suspend image is now greater than
+for 2.6.15 (by saving more data we can get more responsive system
+after resume).
+
+There's the /sys/power/image_size knob that controls the size of the
+image. If you set it to 0 (eg. by echo 0 > /sys/power/image_size as
+root), the 2.6.15 behavior should be restored. If it is still too
+slow, take a look at suspend.sf.net -- userland suspend is faster and
+supports LZF compression to speed it up further.