System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems

SPARC: USB Power Management

Suspending and resuming USB devices is fully supported on SPARC systems. However, do not suspend a device that is busy and never remove a device when the system is powered off under a suspend shutdown.

The USB framework makes a best effort to power manage all devices on SPARC based systems with power management enabled. Power managing a USB device means that the hub driver suspends the port to which the device is connected. Devices that support remote wake up can notify the system to wake up everything in the device's path so that the device can be used. The host system could also wake up the device if an application sends an I/O to the device.

All HID devices (keyboard, mouse, hub, and storage devices), hub devices, and storage devices are power managed by default if they support remote wake-up capability. A USB printer is power managed only between two print jobs. Devices that are managed by the generic USB driver (UGEN) are power managed only when they are closed.

When power management is running to reduce power consumption, USB leaf devices are powered down first. After all devices that are connected to a hub's ports are powered down, the hub is powered down after some delay. To achieve the most efficient power management, do not cascade many hubs.

For information about using the SUSPEND/SHUTDOWN key on SPARC systems, see USB Keyboards and Mouse Devices.