Re: [gentoo-user] Powertop constantly tells me to enable USB suspend, but it is already enabled

[Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 7:58 AM, Eric Martin <freak4uxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
> Paul Hartman wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 8:06 PM, Eric Martin <freak4uxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Paul Hartman wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> As the subject line says, powertop constantly tells me my USB devices
>>>> (keyboard/mouse) are active 100% of the time and to enable USB
>>>> suspend, which I do, but it keeps telling me constantly. How can I
>>>> tell if:
>>>>
>>>> A) USB suspend is actually on or not
>>>> B) powertop is doing anything when I press "U"
>>>>
>>>> I've got USB Suspend/resume support in my kernel, and according to the
>>>> kernel docs the usbcore.usbsuspend default delay is 2 (powertop
>>>> suggests changing it to 1).
>>>>
>>>> Powertop's refresh delay is 5 seconds.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Paul
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Check for USB_SUSPEND in /proc/config.gz
>>
>> I do not have a /proc/config.gz but i have this in /boot/config:
>>
>> CONFIG_USB_SUSPEND=y
>>
> Are you sure you're running a kernel with that configured?  Why not
> enable kernel .config?  It's [CONFIG_IKCONFIG] General Setup -> Kernel
> .config support.  Obviously it adds more to your kernel images but it
> makes tracking down problems like this very easy.  I too have a usb
> keyboard / mouse and I'm pretty sure powertop doesn't register 100% for
> those interfaces...  Heck, unless you're 100% opposed to turning on
> kernel .config support (or can't reboot the server), turn it on,
> recompile, install, reboot and see if CONFIG_USB_SUSPEND is there, and
> see what powertop says.
>
> I was trying to chase down a similar problem (disabling kernel options)
> when I was getting vmalloc() errors with xfs and I discovered that they
> always weren't taking affect.  My guess was I rebooted before cache
> could be written to disk.

Hi,

I actually had it enabled in my kernel, but as a module, and I have
never used it before so I didn't even realize it was there. I had to
dig a little to find out that "modprobe configs" is what I needed to
turn it on. I have this section:

#
# Miscellaneous USB options
#
CONFIG_USB_DEVICEFS=y
# CONFIG_USB_DEVICE_CLASS is not set
# CONFIG_USB_DYNAMIC_MINORS is not set
CONFIG_USB_SUSPEND=y
# CONFIG_USB_OTG is not set
# CONFIG_USB_MON is not set
# CONFIG_USB_WUSB is not set
# CONFIG_USB_WUSB_CBAF is not set

So it appears I do have it properly configured, at least.

Is there any way to tell whether or not a device is suspended, or if
autosuspend is kicking in? I don't know what's it's supposed to do,
really. Does the fact that I'm using a desktop computer mean that
there's a chance USB suspend isn't even available?

Thanks,
Paul