uswsusp or not?

[Steve Langasek]

On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 02:27:01PM +0100, James Westby wrote:

>   * When recommends became installed by default the recommends
>     of uswsusp by pm-utils meant that everyone got uswsusp
>     installed.

This definitely didn't happen for me (or, as far as I can tell from bug
report frequency, the vast majority of users?)

> Do we want uswsusp to be installed by default?

Nope - uswsusp is in universe, and is not the supported suspend method.

> If so, and as there is probably a good reason not to have s2ram,

The reason given in the changelog is:

 uswsusp (0.6~cvs20070618-1ubuntu2) gutsy; urgency=low

   * Don't build s2ram. It's not sensible on Ubuntu. 

  -- Matthew Garrett <mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org>  Mon, 20 Aug 2007 15:47:18 +0100

Unfortunately that doesn't explain much.

> should we create a dummy s2ram that uses the kernel method instead?

That seems like a reasonable option if it's practical.  Alternatively, would
it be feasible to change pm-utils to choose its backend based on which
method (suspend vs. hibernate) was selected?

> If we don't want uswsusp to be used by default then the recommends
> should be downgraded to a suggests

I agree with this, in any case.

> If we don't want uswsusp to be used even if installed

This was the case in both gutsy and hardy as a result of Matthew's change;
it didn't go completely unnoticed, but if it takes two release cycles to
escalate to the point of getting it fixed, we clearly don't have a large
number of users who rely on uswsusp for their suspending.

But from bug #246053, I understand that it's not zero; so we shouldn't break
uswsusp completely, even if we should discourage its use in favor of
resolving any bugs in the supported backend.

> A bit more investigation shows that this doesn't affect new
> installs, as uswsusp is not on the CD. My current guess is
> this only affects machines that were installed when pm-utils
> wasn't installed by default and upgraded to newer releases.

I'm not sure it affects anyone who didn't install the uswsusp package
manually - pm-utils in hardy already had the Recommends on uswsusp, and hal
in hardy Depends: pm-utils.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org