Re: [PATCH v2] dell-wmi: process Dell Instant Launch hotkey on Dell Vostro V131

[Darren Hart <dvhart@infradead.org>]

On Fri, Dec 04, 2015 at 02:27:45PM +0100, Michał Kępień wrote:
> > This patch is not enough for enabling 0xe025 key on that Vostro machine.
> > Some extra SMBIOS call is needed, without them ACPI will not send WMI
> > keypress event.
> 
> Indeed.  But have you read the last e-mail I wrote before submitting the
> original patch [1]?  Brightness control on the V131 is already broken
> "out of the box" with newer kernels (flickering upon brightness change),
> but if we do what you're suggesting and include the SMI call in the
> kernel, we'll break it even more, to the point where pressing one of the
> brightness control keys might not result in any brightness change at
> all.  Sure, we can fix that by overriding an arbitrary ACPI method.  Oh,
> wait, did I say "fix"?
> 
> I posted the patch without the SMI call because that way if you want to
> use the Dell Instant Launch hotkey, you just fire up a userspace script
> (which uses libsmbios and takes care of overriding the ACPI method) and
> chances are you will end up with a fully functional system.  Of course
> you need to understand that using this script is not an elegant solution
> and that it might break something else, but it's your choice, not the
> kernel's.  And the patch itself does not change kernel's default
> behavior, so we're not risking breaking any other models out there.
> 
> > At least I think this one patch should not be included into kernel until
> > there will be full support for 0xe025 key (adding that SMBIOS call).
> 
> Again, fully supporting the Dell Instant Launch hotkey makes brightness
> control even more broken than it has to be.  In other words, everything
> is terrible.
> 
> The only real solution to all these issues is a BIOS fix and I'm pretty
> sure it's not happening.
> 
> [1] http://www.spinics.net/lists/platform-driver-x86/msg07679.html
> 

I have this patch as still pending review, and I *think* where we are is Pali
had some objections but Michal felt they didn't help address the problem.

Where are we?

-- 
Darren Hart
Intel Open Source Technology Center