0001 ============
0002 Swap suspend
0003 ============
0004
0005 Some warnings, first.
0006
0007 .. warning::
0008
0009 **BIG FAT WARNING**
0010
0011 If you touch anything on disk between suspend and resume...
0012 ...kiss your data goodbye.
0013
0014 If you do resume from initrd after your filesystems are mounted...
0015 ...bye bye root partition.
0016
0017 [this is actually same case as above]
0018
0019 If you have unsupported ( ) devices using DMA, you may have some
0020 problems. If your disk driver does not support suspend... (IDE does),
0021 it may cause some problems, too. If you change kernel command line
0022 between suspend and resume, it may do something wrong. If you change
0023 your hardware while system is suspended... well, it was not good idea;
0024 but it will probably only crash.
0025
0026 ( ) suspend/resume support is needed to make it safe.
0027
0028 If you have any filesystems on USB devices mounted before software suspend,
0029 they won't be accessible after resume and you may lose data, as though
0030 you have unplugged the USB devices with mounted filesystems on them;
0031 see the FAQ below for details. (This is not true for more traditional
0032 power states like "standby", which normally don't turn USB off.)
0033
0034 Swap partition:
0035 You need to append resume=/dev/your_swap_partition to kernel command
0036 line or specify it using /sys/power/resume.
0037
0038 Swap file:
0039 If using a swapfile you can also specify a resume offset using
0040 resume_offset=<number> on the kernel command line or specify it
0041 in /sys/power/resume_offset.
0042
0043 After preparing then you suspend by::
0044
0045 echo shutdown > /sys/power/disk; echo disk > /sys/power/state
0046
0047 - If you feel ACPI works pretty well on your system, you might try::
0048
0049 echo platform > /sys/power/disk; echo disk > /sys/power/state
0050
0051 - If you would like to write hibernation image to swap and then suspend
0052 to RAM (provided your platform supports it), you can try::
0053
0054 echo suspend > /sys/power/disk; echo disk > /sys/power/state
0055
0056 - If you have SATA disks, you'll need recent kernels with SATA suspend
0057 support. For suspend and resume to work, make sure your disk drivers
0058 are built into kernel -- not modules. [There's way to make
0059 suspend/resume with modular disk drivers, see FAQ, but you probably
0060 should not do that.]
0061
0062 If you want to limit the suspend image size to N bytes, do::
0063
0064 echo N > /sys/power/image_size
0065
0066 before suspend (it is limited to around 2/5 of available RAM by default).
0067
0068 - The resume process checks for the presence of the resume device,
0069 if found, it then checks the contents for the hibernation image signature.
0070 If both are found, it resumes the hibernation image.
0071
0072 - The resume process may be triggered in two ways:
0073
0074 1) During lateinit: If resume=/dev/your_swap_partition is specified on
0075 the kernel command line, lateinit runs the resume process. If the
0076 resume device has not been probed yet, the resume process fails and
0077 bootup continues.
0078 2) Manually from an initrd or initramfs: May be run from
0079 the init script by using the /sys/power/resume file. It is vital
0080 that this be done prior to remounting any filesystems (even as
0081 read-only) otherwise data may be corrupted.
0082
0083 Article about goals and implementation of Software Suspend for Linux
0084 ====================================================================
0085
0086 Author: Gábor Kuti
0087 Last revised: 2003-10-20 by Pavel Machek
0088
0089 Idea and goals to achieve
0090 -------------------------
0091
0092 Nowadays it is common in several laptops that they have a suspend button. It
0093 saves the state of the machine to a filesystem or to a partition and switches
0094 to standby mode. Later resuming the machine the saved state is loaded back to
0095 ram and the machine can continue its work. It has two real benefits. First we
0096 save ourselves the time machine goes down and later boots up, energy costs
0097 are real high when running from batteries. The other gain is that we don't have
0098 to interrupt our programs so processes that are calculating something for a long
0099 time shouldn't need to be written interruptible.
0100
0101 swsusp saves the state of the machine into active swaps and then reboots or
0102 powerdowns. You must explicitly specify the swap partition to resume from with
0103 `resume=` kernel option. If signature is found it loads and restores saved
0104 state. If the option `noresume` is specified as a boot parameter, it skips
0105 the resuming. If the option `hibernate=nocompress` is specified as a boot
0106 parameter, it saves hibernation image without compression.
0107
0108 In the meantime while the system is suspended you should not add/remove any
0109 of the hardware, write to the filesystems, etc.
0110
0111 Sleep states summary
0112 ====================
0113
0114 There are three different interfaces you can use, /proc/acpi should
0115 work like this:
0116
0117 In a really perfect world::
0118
0119 echo 1 > /proc/acpi/sleep # for standby
0120 echo 2 > /proc/acpi/sleep # for suspend to ram
0121 echo 3 > /proc/acpi/sleep # for suspend to ram, but with more power
0122 # conservative
0123 echo 4 > /proc/acpi/sleep # for suspend to disk
0124 echo 5 > /proc/acpi/sleep # for shutdown unfriendly the system
0125
0126 and perhaps::
0127
0128 echo 4b > /proc/acpi/sleep # for suspend to disk via s4bios
0129
0130 Frequently Asked Questions
0131 ==========================
0132
0133 Q:
0134 well, suspending a server is IMHO a really stupid thing,
0135 but... (Diego Zuccato):
0136
0137 A:
0138 You bought new UPS for your server. How do you install it without
0139 bringing machine down? Suspend to disk, rearrange power cables,
0140 resume.
0141
0142 You have your server on UPS. Power died, and UPS is indicating 30
0143 seconds to failure. What do you do? Suspend to disk.
0144
0145
0146 Q:
0147 Maybe I'm missing something, but why don't the regular I/O paths work?
0148
0149 A:
0150 We do use the regular I/O paths. However we cannot restore the data
0151 to its original location as we load it. That would create an
0152 inconsistent kernel state which would certainly result in an oops.
0153 Instead, we load the image into unused memory and then atomically copy
0154 it back to it original location. This implies, of course, a maximum
0155 image size of half the amount of memory.
0156
0157 There are two solutions to this:
0158
0159 * require half of memory to be free during suspend. That way you can
0160 read "new" data onto free spots, then cli and copy
0161
0162 * assume we had special "polling" ide driver that only uses memory
0163 between 0-640KB. That way, I'd have to make sure that 0-640KB is free
0164 during suspending, but otherwise it would work...
0165
0166 suspend2 shares this fundamental limitation, but does not include user
0167 data and disk caches into "used memory" by saving them in
0168 advance. That means that the limitation goes away in practice.
0169
0170 Q:
0171 Does linux support ACPI S4?
0172
0173 A:
0174 Yes. That's what echo platform > /sys/power/disk does.
0175
0176 Q:
0177 What is 'suspend2'?
0178
0179 A:
0180 suspend2 is 'Software Suspend 2', a forked implementation of
0181 suspend-to-disk which is available as separate patches for 2.4 and 2.6
0182 kernels from swsusp.sourceforge.net. It includes support for SMP, 4GB
0183 highmem and preemption. It also has a extensible architecture that
0184 allows for arbitrary transformations on the image (compression,
0185 encryption) and arbitrary backends for writing the image (eg to swap
0186 or an NFS share[Work In Progress]). Questions regarding suspend2
0187 should be sent to the mailing list available through the suspend2
0188 website, and not to the Linux Kernel Mailing List. We are working
0189 toward merging suspend2 into the mainline kernel.
0190
0191 Q:
0192 What is the freezing of tasks and why are we using it?
0193
0194 A:
0195 The freezing of tasks is a mechanism by which user space processes and some
0196 kernel threads are controlled during hibernation or system-wide suspend (on
0197 some architectures). See freezing-of-tasks.txt for details.
0198
0199 Q:
0200 What is the difference between "platform" and "shutdown"?
0201
0202 A:
0203 shutdown:
0204 save state in linux, then tell bios to powerdown
0205
0206 platform:
0207 save state in linux, then tell bios to powerdown and blink
0208 "suspended led"
0209
0210 "platform" is actually right thing to do where supported, but
0211 "shutdown" is most reliable (except on ACPI systems).
0212
0213 Q:
0214 I do not understand why you have such strong objections to idea of
0215 selective suspend.
0216
0217 A:
0218 Do selective suspend during runtime power management, that's okay. But
0219 it's useless for suspend-to-disk. (And I do not see how you could use
0220 it for suspend-to-ram, I hope you do not want that).
0221
0222 Lets see, so you suggest to
0223
0224 * SUSPEND all but swap device and parents
0225 * Snapshot
0226 * Write image to disk
0227 * SUSPEND swap device and parents
0228 * Powerdown
0229
0230 Oh no, that does not work, if swap device or its parents uses DMA,
0231 you've corrupted data. You'd have to do
0232
0233 * SUSPEND all but swap device and parents
0234 * FREEZE swap device and parents
0235 * Snapshot
0236 * UNFREEZE swap device and parents
0237 * Write
0238 * SUSPEND swap device and parents
0239
0240 Which means that you still need that FREEZE state, and you get more
0241 complicated code. (And I have not yet introduce details like system
0242 devices).
0243
0244 Q:
0245 There don't seem to be any generally useful behavioral
0246 distinctions between SUSPEND and FREEZE.
0247
0248 A:
0249 Doing SUSPEND when you are asked to do FREEZE is always correct,
0250 but it may be unnecessarily slow. If you want your driver to stay simple,
0251 slowness may not matter to you. It can always be fixed later.
0252
0253 For devices like disk it does matter, you do not want to spindown for
0254 FREEZE.
0255
0256 Q:
0257 After resuming, system is paging heavily, leading to very bad interactivity.
0258
0259 A:
0260 Try running::
0261
0262 cat /proc/[0-9]*/maps | grep / | sed 's:.* /:/:' | sort -u | while read file
0263 do
0264 test -f "$file" && cat "$file" > /dev/null
0265 done
0266
0267 after resume. swapoff -a; swapon -a may also be useful.
0268
0269 Q:
0270 What happens to devices during swsusp? They seem to be resumed
0271 during system suspend?
0272
0273 A:
0274 That's correct. We need to resume them if we want to write image to
0275 disk. Whole sequence goes like
0276
0277 **Suspend part**
0278
0279 running system, user asks for suspend-to-disk
0280
0281 user processes are stopped
0282
0283 suspend(PMSG_FREEZE): devices are frozen so that they don't interfere
0284 with state snapshot
0285
0286 state snapshot: copy of whole used memory is taken with interrupts
0287 disabled
0288
0289 resume(): devices are woken up so that we can write image to swap
0290
0291 write image to swap
0292
0293 suspend(PMSG_SUSPEND): suspend devices so that we can power off
0294
0295 turn the power off
0296
0297 **Resume part**
0298
0299 (is actually pretty similar)
0300
0301 running system, user asks for suspend-to-disk
0302
0303 user processes are stopped (in common case there are none,
0304 but with resume-from-initrd, no one knows)
0305
0306 read image from disk
0307
0308 suspend(PMSG_FREEZE): devices are frozen so that they don't interfere
0309 with image restoration
0310
0311 image restoration: rewrite memory with image
0312
0313 resume(): devices are woken up so that system can continue
0314
0315 thaw all user processes
0316
0317 Q:
0318 What is this 'Encrypt suspend image' for?
0319
0320 A:
0321 First of all: it is not a replacement for dm-crypt encrypted swap.
0322 It cannot protect your computer while it is suspended. Instead it does
0323 protect from leaking sensitive data after resume from suspend.
0324
0325 Think of the following: you suspend while an application is running
0326 that keeps sensitive data in memory. The application itself prevents
0327 the data from being swapped out. Suspend, however, must write these
0328 data to swap to be able to resume later on. Without suspend encryption
0329 your sensitive data are then stored in plaintext on disk. This means
0330 that after resume your sensitive data are accessible to all
0331 applications having direct access to the swap device which was used
0332 for suspend. If you don't need swap after resume these data can remain
0333 on disk virtually forever. Thus it can happen that your system gets
0334 broken in weeks later and sensitive data which you thought were
0335 encrypted and protected are retrieved and stolen from the swap device.
0336 To prevent this situation you should use 'Encrypt suspend image'.
0337
0338 During suspend a temporary key is created and this key is used to
0339 encrypt the data written to disk. When, during resume, the data was
0340 read back into memory the temporary key is destroyed which simply
0341 means that all data written to disk during suspend are then
0342 inaccessible so they can't be stolen later on. The only thing that
0343 you must then take care of is that you call 'mkswap' for the swap
0344 partition used for suspend as early as possible during regular
0345 boot. This asserts that any temporary key from an oopsed suspend or
0346 from a failed or aborted resume is erased from the swap device.
0347
0348 As a rule of thumb use encrypted swap to protect your data while your
0349 system is shut down or suspended. Additionally use the encrypted
0350 suspend image to prevent sensitive data from being stolen after
0351 resume.
0352
0353 Q:
0354 Can I suspend to a swap file?
0355
0356 A:
0357 Generally, yes, you can. However, it requires you to use the "resume=" and
0358 "resume_offset=" kernel command line parameters, so the resume from a swap
0359 file cannot be initiated from an initrd or initramfs image. See
0360 swsusp-and-swap-files.txt for details.
0361
0362 Q:
0363 Is there a maximum system RAM size that is supported by swsusp?
0364
0365 A:
0366 It should work okay with highmem.
0367
0368 Q:
0369 Does swsusp (to disk) use only one swap partition or can it use
0370 multiple swap partitions (aggregate them into one logical space)?
0371
0372 A:
0373 Only one swap partition, sorry.
0374
0375 Q:
0376 If my application(s) causes lots of memory & swap space to be used
0377 (over half of the total system RAM), is it correct that it is likely
0378 to be useless to try to suspend to disk while that app is running?
0379
0380 A:
0381 No, it should work okay, as long as your app does not mlock()
0382 it. Just prepare big enough swap partition.
0383
0384 Q:
0385 What information is useful for debugging suspend-to-disk problems?
0386
0387 A:
0388 Well, last messages on the screen are always useful. If something
0389 is broken, it is usually some kernel driver, therefore trying with as
0390 little as possible modules loaded helps a lot. I also prefer people to
0391 suspend from console, preferably without X running. Booting with
0392 init=/bin/bash, then swapon and starting suspend sequence manually
0393 usually does the trick. Then it is good idea to try with latest
0394 vanilla kernel.
0395
0396 Q:
0397 How can distributions ship a swsusp-supporting kernel with modular
0398 disk drivers (especially SATA)?
0399
0400 A:
0401 Well, it can be done, load the drivers, then do echo into
0402 /sys/power/resume file from initrd. Be sure not to mount
0403 anything, not even read-only mount, or you are going to lose your
0404 data.
0405
0406 Q:
0407 How do I make suspend more verbose?
0408
0409 A:
0410 If you want to see any non-error kernel messages on the virtual
0411 terminal the kernel switches to during suspend, you have to set the
0412 kernel console loglevel to at least 4 (KERN_WARNING), for example by
0413 doing::
0414
0415 # save the old loglevel
0416 read LOGLEVEL DUMMY < /proc/sys/kernel/printk
0417 # set the loglevel so we see the progress bar.
0418 # if the level is higher than needed, we leave it alone.
0419 if [ $LOGLEVEL -lt 5 ]; then
0420 echo 5 > /proc/sys/kernel/printk
0421 fi
0422
0423 IMG_SZ=0
0424 read IMG_SZ < /sys/power/image_size
0425 echo -n disk > /sys/power/state
0426 RET=$?
0427 #
0428 # the logic here is:
0429 # if image_size > 0 (without kernel support, IMG_SZ will be zero),
0430 # then try again with image_size set to zero.
0431 if [ $RET -ne 0 -a $IMG_SZ -ne 0 ]; then # try again with minimal image size
0432 echo 0 > /sys/power/image_size
0433 echo -n disk > /sys/power/state
0434 RET=$?
0435 fi
0436
0437 # restore previous loglevel
0438 echo $LOGLEVEL > /proc/sys/kernel/printk
0439 exit $RET
0440
0441 Q:
0442 Is this true that if I have a mounted filesystem on a USB device and
0443 I suspend to disk, I can lose data unless the filesystem has been mounted
0444 with "sync"?
0445
0446 A:
0447 That's right ... if you disconnect that device, you may lose data.
0448 In fact, even with "-o sync" you can lose data if your programs have
0449 information in buffers they haven't written out to a disk you disconnect,
0450 or if you disconnect before the device finished saving data you wrote.
0451
0452 Software suspend normally powers down USB controllers, which is equivalent
0453 to disconnecting all USB devices attached to your system.
0454
0455 Your system might well support low-power modes for its USB controllers
0456 while the system is asleep, maintaining the connection, using true sleep
0457 modes like "suspend-to-RAM" or "standby". (Don't write "disk" to the
0458 /sys/power/state file; write "standby" or "mem".) We've not seen any
0459 hardware that can use these modes through software suspend, although in
0460 theory some systems might support "platform" modes that won't break the
0461 USB connections.
0462
0463 Remember that it's always a bad idea to unplug a disk drive containing a
0464 mounted filesystem. That's true even when your system is asleep! The
0465 safest thing is to unmount all filesystems on removable media (such USB,
0466 Firewire, CompactFlash, MMC, external SATA, or even IDE hotplug bays)
0467 before suspending; then remount them after resuming.
0468
0469 There is a work-around for this problem. For more information, see
0470 Documentation/driver-api/usb/persist.rst.
0471
0472 Q:
0473 Can I suspend-to-disk using a swap partition under LVM?
0474
0475 A:
0476 Yes and No. You can suspend successfully, but the kernel will not be able
0477 to resume on its own. You need an initramfs that can recognize the resume
0478 situation, activate the logical volume containing the swap volume (but not
0479 touch any filesystems!), and eventually call::
0480
0481 echo -n "$major:$minor" > /sys/power/resume
0482
0483 where $major and $minor are the respective major and minor device numbers of
0484 the swap volume.
0485
0486 uswsusp works with LVM, too. See http://suspend.sourceforge.net/
0487
0488 Q:
0489 I upgraded the kernel from 2.6.15 to 2.6.16. Both kernels were
0490 compiled with the similar configuration files. Anyway I found that
0491 suspend to disk (and resume) is much slower on 2.6.16 compared to
0492 2.6.15. Any idea for why that might happen or how can I speed it up?
0493
0494 A:
0495 This is because the size of the suspend image is now greater than
0496 for 2.6.15 (by saving more data we can get more responsive system
0497 after resume).
0498
0499 There's the /sys/power/image_size knob that controls the size of the
0500 image. If you set it to 0 (eg. by echo 0 > /sys/power/image_size as
0501 root), the 2.6.15 behavior should be restored. If it is still too
0502 slow, take a look at suspend.sf.net -- userland suspend is faster and
0503 supports LZF compression to speed it up further.