Re: blink driver power saving

From: Bill Davidsen
Date: Thu Jul 05 2007 - 16:27:38 EST


Pavel Machek wrote:

...drivers are not expected to act on their own. I was expecting to
get nice /sys/class/led* interface to my keyboard leds.
What's the benefit of such an interface? If you're able to trigger
keyboard LEDs via that interface, you're also able to use the ioctl()
on /dev/console.

Well, at least it is standartized interface... plus it can do stuff
like "blink that led on disk access".

One of many useful things for system without blinking lights, disk network, thermal alert, etc. And a cheap helper for handicapped folks who can't hear an audible alert.

I think the intention of the blink driver was to have a *early* blink,
i.e. before initrd (and on systems without intrd, before the first
init script runs).

...and yes, it can autoblink, too. It should be even possible to set
default behaviour of led to blink, doing what the blink driver does,
but in a clean way.

Endlessly useful, alarm clock, non-fatal errors on boot, etc.

<it would be nice>
If this were done, priority levels would be nice, so the "I'm taking a dump" or "panic" would block lower level system use like disk or network lights, and user applications would have some policy to put them higher or lower than the pseudo disk light (or not).
</not nice>

--
Bill Davidsen <davidsen@xxxxxxx>
"We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked." - from Slashdot

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