203 lines
6.9 KiB
Plaintext
203 lines
6.9 KiB
Plaintext
Acer Laptop WMI Extras Driver
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http://code.google.com/p/aceracpi
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Version 0.1
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9th February 2008
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Copyright 2007-2008 Carlos Corbacho <carlos@strangeworlds.co.uk>
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acer-wmi is a driver to allow you to control various parts of your Acer laptop
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hardware under Linux which are exposed via ACPI-WMI.
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This driver completely replaces the old out-of-tree acer_acpi, which I am
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currently maintaining for bug fixes only on pre-2.6.25 kernels. All development
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work is now focused solely on acer-wmi.
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Disclaimer
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**********
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Acer and Wistron have provided nothing towards the development acer_acpi or
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acer-wmi. All information we have has been through the efforts of the developers
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and the users to discover as much as possible about the hardware.
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As such, I do warn that this could break your hardware - this is extremely
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unlikely of course, but please bear this in mind.
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Background
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**********
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acer-wmi is derived from acer_acpi, originally developed by Mark
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Smith in 2005, then taken over by Carlos Corbacho in 2007, in order to activate
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the wireless LAN card under a 64-bit version of Linux, as acerhk[1] (the
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previous solution to the problem) relied on making 32 bit BIOS calls which are
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not possible in kernel space from a 64 bit OS.
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[1] acerhk: http://www.cakey.de/acerhk/
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Supported Hardware
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******************
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Please see the website for the current list of known working hardare:
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http://code.google.com/p/aceracpi/wiki/SupportedHardware
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If your laptop is not listed, or listed as unknown, and works with acer-wmi,
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please contact me with a copy of the DSDT.
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If your Acer laptop doesn't work with acer-wmi, I would also like to see the
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DSDT.
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To send me the DSDT, as root/sudo:
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cat /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/DSDT > dsdt
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And send me the resulting 'dsdt' file.
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Usage
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*****
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On Acer laptops, acer-wmi should already be autoloaded based on DMI matching.
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For non-Acer laptops, until WMI based autoloading support is added, you will
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need to manually load acer-wmi.
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acer-wmi creates /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi, and fills it with various
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files whose usage is detailed below, which enables you to control some of the
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following (varies between models):
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* the wireless LAN card radio
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* inbuilt Bluetooth adapter
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* inbuilt 3G card
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* mail LED of your laptop
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* brightness of the LCD panel
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Wireless
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********
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With regards to wireless, all acer-wmi does is enable the radio on the card. It
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is not responsible for the wireless LED - once the radio is enabled, this is
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down to the wireless driver for your card. So the behaviour of the wireless LED,
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once you enable the radio, will depend on your hardware and driver combination.
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e.g. With the BCM4318 on the Acer Aspire 5020 series:
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ndiswrapper: Light blinks on when transmitting
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b43: Solid light, blinks off when transmitting
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Wireless radio control is unconditionally enabled - all Acer laptops that support
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acer-wmi come with built-in wireless. However, should you feel so inclined to
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ever wish to remove the card, or swap it out at some point, please get in touch
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with me, as we may well be able to gain some data on wireless card detection.
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To read the status of the wireless radio (0=off, 1=on):
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cat /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/wireless
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To enable the wireless radio:
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echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/wireless
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To disable the wireless radio:
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echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/wireless
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To set the state of the wireless radio when loading acer-wmi, pass:
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wireless=X (where X is 0 or 1)
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Bluetooth
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*********
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For bluetooth, this is an internal USB dongle, so once enabled, you will get
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a USB device connection event, and a new USB device appears. When you disable
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bluetooth, you get the reverse - a USB device disconnect event, followed by the
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device disappearing again.
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Bluetooth is autodetected by acer-wmi, so if you do not have a bluetooth module
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installed in your laptop, this file won't exist (please be aware that it is
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quite common for Acer not to fit bluetooth to their laptops - so just because
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you have a bluetooth button on the laptop, doesn't mean that bluetooth is
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installed).
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For the adventurously minded - if you want to buy an internal bluetooth
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module off the internet that is compatible with your laptop and fit it, then
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it will work just fine with acer-wmi.
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To read the status of the bluetooth module (0=off, 1=on):
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cat /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/wireless
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To enable the bluetooth module:
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echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/bluetooth
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To disable the bluetooth module:
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echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/bluetooth
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To set the state of the bluetooth module when loading acer-wmi, pass:
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bluetooth=X (where X is 0 or 1)
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3G
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**
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3G is currently not autodetected, so the 'threeg' file is always created under
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sysfs. So far, no-one in possession of an Acer laptop with 3G built-in appears to
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have tried Linux, or reported back, so we don't have any information on this.
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If you have an Acer laptop that does have a 3G card in, please contact me so we
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can properly detect these, and find out a bit more about them.
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To read the status of the 3G card (0=off, 1=on):
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cat /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg
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To enable the 3G card:
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echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg
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To disable the 3G card:
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echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg
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To set the state of the 3G card when loading acer-wmi, pass:
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threeg=X (where X is 0 or 1)
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Mail LED
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********
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This can be found in most older Acer laptops supported by acer-wmi, and many
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newer ones - it is built into the 'mail' button, and blinks when active.
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On newer (WMID) laptops though, we have no way of detecting the mail LED. If
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your laptop identifies itself in dmesg as a WMID model, then please try loading
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acer_acpi with:
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force_series=2490
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This will use a known alternative method of reading/ writing the mail LED. If
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it works, please report back to me with the DMI data from your laptop so this
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can be added to acer-wmi.
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The LED is exposed through the LED subsystem, and can be found in:
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/sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/leds/acer-wmi::mail/
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The mail LED is autodetected, so if you don't have one, the LED device won't
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be registered.
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If you have a mail LED that is not green, please report this to me.
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Backlight
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*********
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The backlight brightness control is available on all acer-wmi supported
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hardware. The maximum brightness level is usually 15, but on some newer laptops
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it's 10 (this is again autodetected).
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The backlight is exposed through the backlight subsystem, and can be found in:
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/sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/backlight/acer-wmi/
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Credits
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*******
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Olaf Tauber, who did the real hard work when he developed acerhk
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http://www.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~tauber/acerhk
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All the authors of laptop ACPI modules in the kernel, whose work
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was an inspiration in the early days of acer_acpi
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Mathieu Segaud, who solved the problem with having to modprobe the driver
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twice in acer_acpi 0.2.
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Jim Ramsay, who added support for the WMID interface
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Mark Smith, who started the original acer_acpi
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And the many people who have used both acer_acpi and acer-wmi.
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