Managing System Power Services

In the Oracle Solaris 11 release, power management configuration has moved into an SMF configuration repository. The new poweradm command is used to manage system power management properties directly rather than using a combination of power-related command, daemon, and configuration file. These changes are part of a wider set of changes to modernize the power management framework in Oracle Solaris 11.

The following power management features are no longer available:

• /etc/power.conf

• pmconfig and powerd

• Device power management

The following properties describe power management components:

• administrative-authority – Defines the source of administrative control for Oracle Solaris power management. This property can be set to none, platform (default value), or smf. When set to platform, the values of time-to-full-capacity and time-to-minimum-responsiveness are taken from the platform's power management commands. When set to smf, the values of time-to-full-capacity and time-to-minimum-responsiveness are taken from SMF. If you attempt to set time-to-full-capacity or time-to-minimum-responsiveness from either a platform command or an SMF service property when in the opposite venue, the value is ignored.

  When administrative-authority is set to none, power management within the Solaris instance is turned off,

• time-to-full-capacity – Defines the maximum time (in microseconds) the system is allowed to reach its full capacity, from any lower-capacity or less-responsive state, while the system is in active state. The maximum time includes when the system is allowed to reach (re-provision and make available) its full capacity, returning from any lower-capacity/less-responsive state, while it has been using any or all of the PM features falling within this boundary.

  By default, this value is taken from the platform, i86pc for example, because the default setting for administrative-authority is set to platform.

  Alternatively, if administrative-authority is set to smf, this value is taken from the definition provided by the SMF power service. At installation time, this value is undefined. If you choose to modify this property, a value appropriate to the needs of the system's workload or applications should be considered.

• time-to-minimum-responsiveness – Defines how long the system is allowed to return to its active state in milliseconds. This parameter provides the minimum capacity required to meet the time-to-full-capacity constraint. By default, this parameter value is taken from the platform, i86pc for example, because the default setting for administrative-authority is set to platform.

  Alternatively, if administrative-authority is set to smf, this value is taken from the definition provided by the SMF power service . At installation time, this value is undefined. If you choose to modify this property, a value appropriate to the needs of the system's workload or applications should be considered.

  Moderate values, seconds for example, allow hardware components or subsystems on the platform to be placed in slower-response inactive states. Larger values, 30 seconds to minutes for example, allow for whole system suspension, using techniques such as suspend-to-RAM.

• suspend-enable – By default, no system running Solaris is permitted to attempt a suspend operation. Setting this property to true permits a suspend operation to be attempted. The value of the administrative-authority has no effect upon this property.

• platform-disabled – When platform-disabled is set to true, the platform has disabled power management. When set to false, the default value, power management is controlled by the value of the above properties.

A brief summary of power management status can be displayed by using the following command:

$ /usr/sbin/poweradm show
Power management is enabled with the hardware platform as the authority:
time-to-full-capacity set to 250 microseconds
time-to-minimum-responsiveness set to 0 milliseconds

All power management properties can be displayed by using the following command:

$ /usr/sbin/poweradm list
active_config/time-to-full-capacity          current=250, platform=250
active_config/time-to-minimum-responsiveness current=0, platform=0
active_control/administrative-authority      current=platform, smf=platform
suspend/suspend-enable                       current=false
platform-disabled                            current=false

In the above output, the active_control/administrative-authority indicates the source of the configuration with two settings:

• platform – Configuration for power management comes from the platform. This is the default value.

• smf – Allows the other power management properties to be set using the poweradm command.

The platform-disabled property in the above output indicates that the platform power management is enabled:

platform-disabled                            current=false

For more information, see poweradm(1M).

Example 5-1 Enabling and Disabling Power Management

If you previously enabled S3-support in the /etc/power.conf file to suspend and resume your system, similar poweradm syntax is:

# poweradm set suspend-enable=true

The suspend-enable property is set to false by default.

Use the following syntax to disable power management:

# poweradm set administrative-authority=none

Disabling the following SMF power management service does not disable power management:

online         Sep_02   svc:/system/power:default

Use the following syntax to disable suspend and resume.

# poweradm set suspend-enable=false

Example 5-2 Setting and Displaying Power Management Parameters

The following example shows how to set time-to-full-capacity to 300 microseconds and time-to-minimum-responsiveness to 500 milliseconds. Lastly, the Oracle Solaris instance is informed of the new values.

# poweradm set time-to-full-capacity=300
# poweradm set time-to-minimum-responsiveness=500
# poweradm set administrative-authority=smf

The following command shows the current time-to-full-capacity value.

# poweradm get time-to-full-capacity
300

The following command retrieves the time-to-full-capacity value set by the platform.

# poweradm get -a platform time-to-full-capacity

Note that this value will only be the same as the current value if administrative-authority is set to platform. For more information, see the above administrative-authority property description.

Troubleshooting System Power Problems

How to Recover from Power Service in Maintenance Mode

If administrative-authority is set to smf before both time-to-full-capacity and time-to-minimum-responsiveness have been set, the service will go into maintenance mode. See the steps below to recover from this scenario.

1. Become an administrator.

   See How to Use Your Assigned Administrative Rights in Oracle Solaris 11.1 Administration: Security Services..

2. Set administrative-authority to none.

   # poweradm set administrative-authority=none

3. Set both time-to-full-capacity and time-to-minimum-responsiveness to their desired values.

   # poweradm set time-to-full-capacity=value
   # poweradm set time-to-minimum-responsiveness=value

4. Clear the service.

   # svcadm clear power

5. Set administrative-authority to smf.

   # poweradm set administrative-authority=smf