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Documentation / power / basic-pm-debugging.txt


Based on kernel version 4.16.1. Page generated on 2018-04-09 11:53 EST.

1	Debugging hibernation and suspend
2		(C) 2007 Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@sisk.pl>, GPL
3	
4	1. Testing hibernation (aka suspend to disk or STD)
5	
6	To check if hibernation works, you can try to hibernate in the "reboot" mode:
7	
8	# echo reboot > /sys/power/disk
9	# echo disk > /sys/power/state
10	
11	and the system should create a hibernation image, reboot, resume and get back to
12	the command prompt where you have started the transition.  If that happens,
13	hibernation is most likely to work correctly.  Still, you need to repeat the
14	test at least a couple of times in a row for confidence.  [This is necessary,
15	because some problems only show up on a second attempt at suspending and
16	resuming the system.]  Moreover, hibernating in the "reboot" and "shutdown"
17	modes causes the PM core to skip some platform-related callbacks which on ACPI
18	systems might be necessary to make hibernation work.  Thus, if your machine fails
19	to hibernate or resume in the "reboot" mode, you should try the "platform" mode:
20	
21	# echo platform > /sys/power/disk
22	# echo disk > /sys/power/state
23	
24	which is the default and recommended mode of hibernation.
25	
26	Unfortunately, the "platform" mode of hibernation does not work on some systems
27	with broken BIOSes.  In such cases the "shutdown" mode of hibernation might
28	work:
29	
30	# echo shutdown > /sys/power/disk
31	# echo disk > /sys/power/state
32	
33	(it is similar to the "reboot" mode, but it requires you to press the power
34	button to make the system resume).
35	
36	If neither "platform" nor "shutdown" hibernation mode works, you will need to
37	identify what goes wrong.
38	
39	a) Test modes of hibernation
40	
41	To find out why hibernation fails on your system, you can use a special testing
42	facility available if the kernel is compiled with CONFIG_PM_DEBUG set.  Then,
43	there is the file /sys/power/pm_test that can be used to make the hibernation
44	core run in a test mode.  There are 5 test modes available:
45	
46	freezer
47	- test the freezing of processes
48	
49	devices
50	- test the freezing of processes and suspending of devices
51	
52	platform
53	- test the freezing of processes, suspending of devices and platform
54	  global control methods(*)
55	
56	processors
57	- test the freezing of processes, suspending of devices, platform
58	  global control methods(*) and the disabling of nonboot CPUs
59	
60	core
61	- test the freezing of processes, suspending of devices, platform global
62	  control methods(*), the disabling of nonboot CPUs and suspending of
63	  platform/system devices
64	
65	(*) the platform global control methods are only available on ACPI systems
66	    and are only tested if the hibernation mode is set to "platform"
67	
68	To use one of them it is necessary to write the corresponding string to
69	/sys/power/pm_test (eg. "devices" to test the freezing of processes and
70	suspending devices) and issue the standard hibernation commands.  For example,
71	to use the "devices" test mode along with the "platform" mode of hibernation,
72	you should do the following:
73	
74	# echo devices > /sys/power/pm_test
75	# echo platform > /sys/power/disk
76	# echo disk > /sys/power/state
77	
78	Then, the kernel will try to freeze processes, suspend devices, wait a few
79	seconds (5 by default, but configurable by the suspend.pm_test_delay module
80	parameter), resume devices and thaw processes.  If "platform" is written to
81	/sys/power/pm_test , then after suspending devices the kernel will additionally
82	invoke the global control methods (eg. ACPI global control methods) used to
83	prepare the platform firmware for hibernation.  Next, it will wait a
84	configurable number of seconds and invoke the platform (eg. ACPI) global
85	methods used to cancel hibernation etc.
86	
87	Writing "none" to /sys/power/pm_test causes the kernel to switch to the normal
88	hibernation/suspend operations.  Also, when open for reading, /sys/power/pm_test
89	contains a space-separated list of all available tests (including "none" that
90	represents the normal functionality) in which the current test level is
91	indicated by square brackets.
92	
93	Generally, as you can see, each test level is more "invasive" than the previous
94	one and the "core" level tests the hardware and drivers as deeply as possible
95	without creating a hibernation image.  Obviously, if the "devices" test fails,
96	the "platform" test will fail as well and so on.  Thus, as a rule of thumb, you
97	should try the test modes starting from "freezer", through "devices", "platform"
98	and "processors" up to "core" (repeat the test on each level a couple of times
99	to make sure that any random factors are avoided).
100	
101	If the "freezer" test fails, there is a task that cannot be frozen (in that case
102	it usually is possible to identify the offending task by analysing the output of
103	dmesg obtained after the failing test).  Failure at this level usually means
104	that there is a problem with the tasks freezer subsystem that should be
105	reported.
106	
107	If the "devices" test fails, most likely there is a driver that cannot suspend
108	or resume its device (in the latter case the system may hang or become unstable
109	after the test, so please take that into consideration).  To find this driver,
110	you can carry out a binary search according to the rules:
111	- if the test fails, unload a half of the drivers currently loaded and repeat
112	(that would probably involve rebooting the system, so always note what drivers
113	have been loaded before the test),
114	- if the test succeeds, load a half of the drivers you have unloaded most
115	recently and repeat.
116	
117	Once you have found the failing driver (there can be more than just one of
118	them), you have to unload it every time before hibernation.  In that case please
119	make sure to report the problem with the driver.
120	
121	It is also possible that the "devices" test will still fail after you have
122	unloaded all modules. In that case, you may want to look in your kernel
123	configuration for the drivers that can be compiled as modules (and test again
124	with these drivers compiled as modules).  You may also try to use some special
125	kernel command line options such as "noapic", "noacpi" or even "acpi=off".
126	
127	If the "platform" test fails, there is a problem with the handling of the
128	platform (eg. ACPI) firmware on your system.  In that case the "platform" mode
129	of hibernation is not likely to work.  You can try the "shutdown" mode, but that
130	is rather a poor man's workaround.
131	
132	If the "processors" test fails, the disabling/enabling of nonboot CPUs does not
133	work (of course, this only may be an issue on SMP systems) and the problem
134	should be reported.  In that case you can also try to switch the nonboot CPUs
135	off and on using the /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/online sysfs attributes and
136	see if that works.
137	
138	If the "core" test fails, which means that suspending of the system/platform
139	devices has failed (these devices are suspended on one CPU with interrupts off),
140	the problem is most probably hardware-related and serious, so it should be
141	reported.
142	
143	A failure of any of the "platform", "processors" or "core" tests may cause your
144	system to hang or become unstable, so please beware.  Such a failure usually
145	indicates a serious problem that very well may be related to the hardware, but
146	please report it anyway.
147	
148	b) Testing minimal configuration
149	
150	If all of the hibernation test modes work, you can boot the system with the
151	"init=/bin/bash" command line parameter and attempt to hibernate in the
152	"reboot", "shutdown" and "platform" modes.  If that does not work, there
153	probably is a problem with a driver statically compiled into the kernel and you
154	can try to compile more drivers as modules, so that they can be tested
155	individually.  Otherwise, there is a problem with a modular driver and you can
156	find it by loading a half of the modules you normally use and binary searching
157	in accordance with the algorithm:
158	- if there are n modules loaded and the attempt to suspend and resume fails,
159	unload n/2 of the modules and try again (that would probably involve rebooting
160	the system),
161	- if there are n modules loaded and the attempt to suspend and resume succeeds,
162	load n/2 modules more and try again.
163	
164	Again, if you find the offending module(s), it(they) must be unloaded every time
165	before hibernation, and please report the problem with it(them).
166	
167	c) Using the "test_resume" hibernation option
168	
169	/sys/power/disk generally tells the kernel what to do after creating a
170	hibernation image.  One of the available options is "test_resume" which
171	causes the just created image to be used for immediate restoration.  Namely,
172	after doing:
173	
174	# echo test_resume > /sys/power/disk
175	# echo disk > /sys/power/state
176	
177	a hibernation image will be created and a resume from it will be triggered
178	immediately without involving the platform firmware in any way.
179	
180	That test can be used to check if failures to resume from hibernation are
181	related to bad interactions with the platform firmware.  That is, if the above
182	works every time, but resume from actual hibernation does not work or is
183	unreliable, the platform firmware may be responsible for the failures.
184	
185	On architectures and platforms that support using different kernels to restore
186	hibernation images (that is, the kernel used to read the image from storage and
187	load it into memory is different from the one included in the image) or support
188	kernel address space randomization, it also can be used to check if failures
189	to resume may be related to the differences between the restore and image
190	kernels.
191	
192	d) Advanced debugging
193	
194	In case that hibernation does not work on your system even in the minimal
195	configuration and compiling more drivers as modules is not practical or some
196	modules cannot be unloaded, you can use one of the more advanced debugging
197	techniques to find the problem.  First, if there is a serial port in your box,
198	you can boot the kernel with the 'no_console_suspend' parameter and try to log
199	kernel messages using the serial console.  This may provide you with some
200	information about the reasons of the suspend (resume) failure.  Alternatively,
201	it may be possible to use a FireWire port for debugging with firescope
202	(http://v3.sk/~lkundrak/firescope/).  On x86 it is also possible to
203	use the PM_TRACE mechanism documented in Documentation/power/s2ram.txt .
204	
205	2. Testing suspend to RAM (STR)
206	
207	To verify that the STR works, it is generally more convenient to use the s2ram
208	tool available from http://suspend.sf.net and documented at
209	http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Suspend_to_RAM (S2RAM_LINK).
210	
211	Namely, after writing "freezer", "devices", "platform", "processors", or "core"
212	into /sys/power/pm_test (available if the kernel is compiled with
213	CONFIG_PM_DEBUG set) the suspend code will work in the test mode corresponding
214	to given string.  The STR test modes are defined in the same way as for
215	hibernation, so please refer to Section 1 for more information about them.  In
216	particular, the "core" test allows you to test everything except for the actual
217	invocation of the platform firmware in order to put the system into the sleep
218	state.
219	
220	Among other things, the testing with the help of /sys/power/pm_test may allow
221	you to identify drivers that fail to suspend or resume their devices.  They
222	should be unloaded every time before an STR transition.
223	
224	Next, you can follow the instructions at S2RAM_LINK to test the system, but if
225	it does not work "out of the box", you may need to boot it with
226	"init=/bin/bash" and test s2ram in the minimal configuration.  In that case,
227	you may be able to search for failing drivers by following the procedure
228	analogous to the one described in section 1.  If you find some failing drivers,
229	you will have to unload them every time before an STR transition (ie. before
230	you run s2ram), and please report the problems with them.
231	
232	There is a debugfs entry which shows the suspend to RAM statistics. Here is an
233	example of its output.
234		# mount -t debugfs none /sys/kernel/debug
235		# cat /sys/kernel/debug/suspend_stats
236		success: 20
237		fail: 5
238		failed_freeze: 0
239		failed_prepare: 0
240		failed_suspend: 5
241		failed_suspend_noirq: 0
242		failed_resume: 0
243		failed_resume_noirq: 0
244		failures:
245		  last_failed_dev:	alarm
246					adc
247		  last_failed_errno:	-16
248					-16
249		  last_failed_step:	suspend
250					suspend
251	Field success means the success number of suspend to RAM, and field fail means
252	the failure number. Others are the failure number of different steps of suspend
253	to RAM. suspend_stats just lists the last 2 failed devices, error number and
254	failed step of suspend.
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