is "echo mem > /sys/power/state" good practice?

fpemud · Guru Joined: 15 Feb 2012 Posts: 349

I know that all userspace processes just freeze/thaw in "echo mem > /sys/power/state" scenario, they even don't know what happened.
But in for example "systemctl suspend" scenario, process can get notification, can inhibit the suspend process. It is more complex or more "graceful". Many system service or application is using these features, like NetworkManager.

I want to know are all these "graceful" behaviors really necessary? Not because linux programs are not "robust" enough?
If they are, then "echo mem > /sys/power/state" would definitely break the system and should not be used.

eccerr0r · Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 3:46 pm Post subject:

Depends.

If the "graceful" suspend occurs, there's a higher chance of recovery IF something happens between when the suspend takes place and the resume.

If you guarantee that nothing bad happens like a piece of hardware gets pulled like a disk or a power supply, or if the hardware gets placed into some unscrupulous person's hands (hint: do you want your security keys suspended in memory?), then the quick memory suspend is fine...it was designed to be minimal safe suspend.
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Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

I accidentally suspended using that one-liner while mpv was streaming a video and it came back fine, that's a pretty good indication of how unnecessary all the other layers are.

Paranoid security and syncing removable devices are valid use cases for doing anything fancier, but anything else is just broken software.

eccerr0r · Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2018 1:57 am Post subject:

I'm not entirely sure it's simply security paranoia, if you have to leave your laptop somewhere or forget it's suspended, someone can instantly unsuspend it and see exactly what you were doing at the time of suspend, no password needed. At least with the infrastructure it will blank the screen and ask for a password before allowing access once more.

Or if you forget about your computer while it's suspended and your battery runs out... if everything was synced and cleaned up before you suspend with the infrastructure, you could be back and running with less data loss.

It's totally up to you on the risk you want to take.
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fpemud · Guru Joined: 15 Feb 2012 Posts: 349

eccerr0r · Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2018 2:19 pm Post subject:

Technically running sync is not necessary as before and after suspend, the state of memory and disk theoretically should match - so even if you don't sync, it should be fine (as long as you don't lose power or otherwise disturb state.)

However there's also the notion of what's in userspace versus what's on disk, and kernel does not necessarily know what's consistent or not. So for those sensitive (or stupid?) applications, getting an alert could let it flush state to disk as well.

However once again, there's no need for this unless you have inadvertent state loss during suspend.
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