Power Management Bugs Hold Up Some Linux Laptops Due To Regulatory Requirements

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • superm1
    replied
    Originally posted by oiaohm View Post

    For the users effected by the 20% cases that a lot. Another question is could this failure to D3cold at shutdown be why some laptops that ship windows only that are then converted to Linux seam fine when you boot into Linux after Windows but are absolute dog breakfast with issues if you shutdown Linux than reboot back into Linux. If this is the case then the problem is a little bit more serous than reduced battery. Modern day laptops where you cannot pull out battery has made it a lot harder to troubleshoot issues like this.
    I wouldn't say it's impossible to be caused by the same thing. Try my patches and see!

    Leave a comment:


  • oiaohm
    replied
    Originally posted by superm1 View Post
    It's a generic problem with Linux. It doesn't put PCIe devices into D3cold at shutdown (S5). So you're certainly affected; but the degree of how severe it is would need to be measured.
    In most laptops the amount of power that we're talking here is relatively insignificant. The worst offenders that I observed which lead to this patch have about a 20 percent improvement over S5 power consumption.
    For the users effected by the 20% cases that a lot. Another question is could this failure to D3cold at shutdown be why some laptops that ship windows only that are then converted to Linux seam fine when you boot into Linux after Windows but are absolute dog breakfast with issues if you shutdown Linux than reboot back into Linux. If this is the case then the problem is a little bit more serous than reduced battery. Modern day laptops where you cannot pull out battery has made it a lot harder to troubleshoot issues like this.

    Leave a comment:


  • oiaohm
    replied
    Originally posted by OmniNegro View Post
    Mistakes happen. But even if this is merely a mistake, they can edit their own website..
    No this is the USA EPA we are talking about those 7 defective documents before getting to one that correct with pictures is published over 20 years. Text and tables is very good for working on ground water contamination spread.

    I don't know if these mistakes are intentional. But I can tell you with the documentation revision system the USA EPA uses its not as straight forwards to fix a mistake. They will publish another page in some random area with corrections to the page they never apply reasonable quickly or sometimes at all.

    Some of this I suspect the USA EPA documentation handling system has been design that errors in documentation production are not detected early due to lack of editors and are insanely hard to fix after published. This is way of when USA EPA have regulations that work and can be documented as working that could be made stricter and work better end up looking like a laughing stock because of errors in the documents so meaning Industry does not have to obey as much regulation on emissions and the like as they should.. You also have documents from the USA EPA that are 100 pages long with 200 pages of corrections yet they will not do a new reviesion because they don't have funding to create new revision..

    I don't say that USA EPA lies as such. USA EPA has a document/website production system of absolute trash that means any human mistake when creating the document/website end up stuck in it. Mixed with lots of human mistakes is a lot of valid and correct research. I am very clear to say USA EPA because the other EPA around the world all have very good documentation production systems with very effect mistake removal procedures.

    As I said mistakes like the one you pointed to cause people to through the baby out with the bathwater. The valid and correctly made research of the USA EPA is the baby. The documents that research is in has a lot of bath water of human mistakes including personal bias in write ups that the USA FDA documentation system is not designed to prevent.

    Having to do formal land management has really made me hate the USA FDA documentation production system due to how much time you waste making sure you have the document and all it correction notes.

    Leave a comment:


  • superm1
    replied
    As you said there are firmware updates necessary to fix this, can you give any means to see for oneselves if one happens to have one of the affected systems? Like, specifiy firmware vesions, specifiy hardware configurtaions, etc. ?

    It's a generic problem with Linux. It doesn't put PCIe devices into D3cold at shutdown (S5). So you're certainly affected; but the degree of how severe it is would need to be measured.
    In most laptops the amount of power that we're talking here is relatively insignificant. The worst offenders that I observed which lead to this patch have about a 20 percent improvement over S5 power consumption.

    Leave a comment:


  • reba
    replied
    Originally posted by markpearson View Post
    - As a side note, for the platforms in question we are working on a FW workaround, as it will take some time to deliver the proper fix upstream, especially with the holidays on us It was really important to understand root cause though.

    Mark
    Hey Mark,

    thank you for the informations and for stopping by at Phoronix!

    As you said there are firmware updates necessary to fix this, can you give any means to see for oneselves if one happens to have one of the affected systems? Like, specifiy firmware vesions, specifiy hardware configurtaions, etc. ?
    I have an 20YM000B, which is an amazing machine and has extremely good Linux support (just the fingerprint sensor isn'tworking - which I never intended to use, perfect) and I am unsure if Lenovo still makes firmware updates for it.

    Leave a comment:


  • Old Grouch
    replied
    Originally posted by archkde View Post

    Ok, I see now where the misunderstanding lies. You're talking about the shutdown process getting stuck and the system remaining visibly on, which I've certainly experienced my fair share of. But here the system looks like it's actually turned off properly, but somehow internally isn't and continues consuming significant power.
    OK. I don't think I've experienced that...yet. So we have another new! exciting! failure mode to add to the collection. Forgive me if my celebrations are too noisy.

    It illustrates the importance of standard interfaces with well-documented and well-implemented consistent behaviour: which I know is severely lacking when talking about ACPI. For obvious reasons, once something works 'well enough' with Microsoft Windows, it's good for shipping; and one never knows about undocumented quirks and non-standard behaviour.

    I'm not sure how things can be improved, as the process has remained broken for years now.

    Leave a comment:


  • archkde
    replied
    Originally posted by Old Grouch View Post

    OK. I'll say that some of the more frequent problems I've had are to do with shutdowns. I've had systems go into tight cpu loops with fans screaming until either hard powered-off or the batteries run out, systems that sit waiting indefinitely for network hardware, or graphics hardware, or unable to work out how to dismount /var that was on a separate, encrypted partition.
    Ok, I see now where the misunderstanding lies. You're talking about the shutdown process getting stuck and the system remaining visibly on, which I've certainly experienced my fair share of. But here the system looks like it's actually turned off properly, but somehow internally isn't and continues consuming significant power.

    Leave a comment:


  • agd5f
    replied
    This is basically a firmware issue that showed up because two different OSes have slightly different behaviors with respect to S5. I'm not sure if it's a bug or not. We'd need to check whether the ACPI spec says anything with respect to D states when entering S5. Windows puts devices into d3cold before entering S5, Linux does not. Windows is the larger market so it gets a lot more testing. The issue was root caused. The solutions are to either change the firmware or update Linux to align with Windows. Arguably the latter is probably a better solution because there will always be hardware that is either not tested with Linux or tested much less (just due to the relative market sizes), so the more aligned both OSes can be in this area, the better the overall user experience.

    Leave a comment:


  • OmniNegro
    replied
    Originally posted by oiaohm View Post

    That one of those one what makes you curse because you know a person going to use that mistake to throw the baby out with the bath water. They quote where they got the pictures from and then you wake up it set of over 800 photo pairs taken from exactly matched up locations. Yes the person making the EPA website just happens to use a miss match. The match up pairs show the same air quality change.

    There is a lot of cases of USA EPA staff producing website and documentation that is pure incompetence when it comes to handling of images. Charts are tables from the USA EPA are a lot safer bets.

    Fun was 500 page document with 20 photos from the USA EPA and all the correct photos were in the document just all in the wrong places not one in the right place fun of playing copy the pictures and paste them into the right location so that description in fact matched photo. Yes this included author photo being some high rise building instead of the authors photo. It took them 8 editions to get the photos in the right place. So this is a minor level of USA EPA photo mess up. Does make you wonder who does proof checking at the USA EPA at times. Yes 6 editions of that document managed to move the photos around and still not get one in the right place. Know of a library that has all 8 editions of that report on shelf for a laugh.
    Mistakes happen. But even if this is merely a mistake, they can edit their own website. They choose not to. The only reason I can think of that they do not is that the mistake favors the opinion they want you to believe. I never saw the 500 page document you are speaking of. And I have no intention of looking it up. I was only making the point that while I do not believe the EPA, I have reasons not to. And none of those were ever mentioned here. They are not important. You clearly want to believe the EPA. I do not have a choice. I simply cannot trust them. Again, the reasons are not being mentioned.

    This article is about Laptops being forced to be certified by a governmental branch for power usage standards. That is fine. But when I heard that the new "standard" MS forced upon the world makes the system do new things without asking for permission, all I can see, hear and think of are big red flags. Not worth mentioning, but there you have it.

    Leave a comment:


  • oiaohm
    replied
    Originally posted by OmniNegro View Post
    The image from New York in 1973 and 2013 is a perfect example. Those two images are not set in the same location. One is over the ocean, the next is over a field. So side by side images are lies if the EPA is the group that produced it.
    That one of those one what makes you curse because you know a person going to use that mistake to throw the baby out with the bath water. They quote where they got the pictures from and then you wake up it set of over 800 photo pairs taken from exactly matched up locations. Yes the person making the EPA website just happens to use a miss match. The match up pairs show the same air quality change.

    There is a lot of cases of USA EPA staff producing website and documentation that is pure incompetence when it comes to handling of images. Charts are tables from the USA EPA are a lot safer bets.

    Fun was 500 page document with 20 photos from the USA EPA and all the correct photos were in the document just all in the wrong places not one in the right place fun of playing copy the pictures and paste them into the right location so that description in fact matched photo. Yes this included author photo being some high rise building instead of the authors photo. It took them 8 editions to get the photos in the right place. So this is a minor level of USA EPA photo mess up. Does make you wonder who does proof checking at the USA EPA at times. Yes 6 editions of that document managed to move the photos around and still not get one in the right place. Know of a library that has all 8 editions of that report on shelf for a laugh.

    Leave a comment:

Working...
X