Honor state disabling in the cpuidle ladder governor

There are two cpuidle governors ladder and menu. While the ladder
governor is always available, if CONFIG_CPU_IDLE is selected, the
menu governor additionally requires CONFIG_NO_HZ.

A particular C state can be disabled by writing to the sysfs file
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuN/cpuidle/stateN/disable, but this mechanism
is only implemented in the menu governor. Thus, in a system where
CONFIG_NO_HZ is not selected, the ladder governor becomes default and
always will walk through all sleep states - irrespective of whether the
C state was disabled via sysfs or not. The only way to select a specific
C state was to write the related latency to /dev/cpu_dma_latency and
keep the file open as long as this setting was required - not very
practical and not suitable for setting a single core in an SMP system.

With this patch, the ladder governor only will promote to the next
C state, if it has not been disabled, and it will demote, if the
current C state was disabled.

Note that the patch does not make the setting of the sysfs variable
"disable" coherent, i.e. if one is disabling a light state, then all
deeper states are disabled as well, but the "disable" variable does not
reflect it. Likewise, if one enables a deep state but a lighter state
still is disabled, then this has no effect. A related section has been
added to the documentation.

Signed-off-by: Carsten Emde <C.Emde@osadl.org>
Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@sisk.pl>

1 files changed, 9 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/cpuidle/sysfs.txt b/Documentation/cpuidle/sysfs.txt
index 9d28a3406e74..b6f44f490ed7 100644
--- a/Documentation/cpuidle/sysfs.txt
+++ b/Documentation/cpuidle/sysfs.txt
@@ -76,9 +76,17 @@ total 0
 
 
 * desc : Small description about the idle state (string)
-* disable : Option to disable this idle state (bool)
+* disable : Option to disable this idle state (bool) -> see note below
 * latency : Latency to exit out of this idle state (in microseconds)
 * name : Name of the idle state (string)
 * power : Power consumed while in this idle state (in milliwatts)
 * time : Total time spent in this idle state (in microseconds)
 * usage : Number of times this state was entered (count)
+
+Note:
+The behavior and the effect of the disable variable depends on the
+implementation of a particular governor. In the ladder governor, for
+example, it is not coherent, i.e. if one is disabling a light state,
+then all deeper states are disabled as well, but the disable variable
+does not reflect it. Likewise, if one enables a deep state but a lighter
+state still is disabled, then this has no effect.