Pushing ACPI to 2.4.20?

Pushing ACPI to 2.4.20?

[ahaning-mn4gwa5WIIQysxA8WJXlww]

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something or I just do not know what I'm 
doing WRT ACPI on my machine. I don't understand why there would be any 
push to get ACPI in the mainstream kernel when it seems that the major 
goal for now is just booting and assigning IRQs.

The machine that I'm using to test ACPI is a desktop, so maybe there's 
less concern for it for right now. However, I can't get any of the low 
power modes (except mode S5) to work. My machine either does nothing and 
continues to work normally, or it continues at full power until I 
momentarily press the power button, then my shell is returned to me.

Shouldn't I be able to at least suspend my machine to RAM and turn off 
all of the fans and disk, before this goes to the main kernel? Even with 
APM, I can put the machine in standby/suspend, I just don't get fan 
control, which is what I'd like.

Do I just not know what I'm doing? Should I be able to suspend my 
machine to RAM or disk with ACPI?

Thanks

Andy
haninger.3-ZbGKxL/pcrQ@public.gmane.org



-------------------------------------------------------
This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek
Welcome to geek heaven.
http://thinkgeek.com/sf

Re: Pushing ACPI to 2.4.20?

[Stephen White]

---- Original Message ----
> From ahaning-mn4gwa5WIIQysxA8WJXlww@public.gmane.org <ahaning@mindspring.com>
> Date: Tuesday, 24 Sep 2002, 23:16
>
> Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something or I just do not know what I'm 
> doing WRT ACPI on my machine. I don't understand why there would be any 
> push to get ACPI in the mainstream kernel when it seems that the major 
> goal for now is just booting and assigning IRQs.

There are various reasons for this:

* Power management.  Some modern laptops do not support apm - they don't
idle properly, monitor temperature and turn their fan on and off, report
battery status, throttle the CPU or switch off unless you use ACPI.

* To provide a basis for patches such as swsusp that provides
suspend-to-disk, and for projects such as those working to support 
speedstep.

* IIRC some architectures require ACPI to assign IRQs to boot properly.

It is also predominantly the same code that is used in the 2.5.x kernels 
where suspend-to-RAM and suspend-to-disk are supported and given the 
above bullet points it is worth making as much as possible of this 
functionality available to 2.4.x users.

The first point is probably the most crucial.  If you have one of many
modern laptops and want to be able to use it for purposes other than
frying eggs and seeing quite how quickly it is possible to drain a
battery but don't want to brave 2.5.x then you're left with no choice
but 2.4.x+ACPI patchs.

I dare say there are other reasons I've missed here.

-- 
Stephen White <stephen-acpi-devel-4QvXXjU8Dv4@public.gmane.org>


-------------------------------------------------------
This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek
Welcome to geek heaven.
http://thinkgeek.com/sf

Re: Pushing ACPI to 2.4.20?

[Matthew Wilcox]

On Tue, Sep 24, 2002 at 10:16:43PM +0000, ahaning-mn4gwa5WIIQysxA8WJXlww@public.gmane.org wrote:
> Shouldn't I be able to at least suspend my machine to RAM and turn off 
> all of the fans and disk, before this goes to the main kernel? Even with 
> APM, I can put the machine in standby/suspend, I just don't get fan 
> control, which is what I'd like.

You'll still be able to use APM.  ACPI is already in the kernel, this is
`just' an update.  It's not good to have this code so far diverged from
what's in the kernel -- many machines, including those I'm paid to work
on, need more recent ACPI code than that in the standard kernel.

-- 
Revolutions do not require corporate support.


-------------------------------------------------------
This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek
Welcome to geek heaven.
http://thinkgeek.com/sf