RE: ACPI source releases updated (20030509)

RE: ACPI source releases updated (20030509)

[Grover, Andrew]

> From: Markus Gaugusch [mailto:markus-z+rTbpWsRgbk7+2FdBfRIA@public.gmane.org] 
> Can you give a comment, why my DSDT in initrd is not included?

Can you help me understand what problem putting the DSDT in initrd
fixes?

Thanks -- Regards -- Andy


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RE: ACPI source releases updated (20030509)

[Nathan Gray]

Grover, Andrew wrote:
> Can you help me understand what problem putting the DSDT in initrd
> fixes?

It solves the problem of having to recompile your kernel in order to change
your DSDT.  Switching to a new DSDT becomes as simple as:

cp initrd_backup.img initrd.img
cat marker >> initrd.img  # Mark the start of the DSDT
cat DSDT.aml >> initrd.img
reboot

It's very handy.

Cheers,
-n8
-- 
>>>-- Nathaniel Gray -- Caltech Computer Science ------>
>>>-- Mojave Project -- http://mojave.cs.caltech.edu -->



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Re: RE: ACPI source releases updated (20030509)

[Sebastian Henschel]

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hi there...

Received at 2003-05-13 / 09:14 by Nathan Gray:
> Grover, Andrew wrote:
> > Can you help me understand what problem putting the DSDT in initrd
> > fixes?
> 
> It solves the problem of having to recompile your kernel in order to change
> your DSDT.  Switching to a new DSDT becomes as simple as:
> 
> cp initrd_backup.img initrd.img
> cat marker >> initrd.img  # Mark the start of the DSDT
> cat DSDT.aml >> initrd.img
> reboot
> 
> It's very handy.

i totally agree with that.

and the patch seems quite small and non-intrusive to me, though i do not
know the innards of acpi/kernel (yet) so well.

on the other hand, this patch should not be necessary anyway. users
should not patch part of their "bios" by themselves to get their system
to work better. but this is how the situation currently looks like, as
long as the vendors provide buggy DSDTs. i would consider the patch to
be temporary, marked as soon-to-be-deleted. :)

cheers,
 sebastian
-- 
::: sebastian henschel
::: kodeaffe
::: lynx -source http://www.kodeaffe.de/shensche.pub | gpg --import

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Re: RE: ACPI source releases updated (20030509)

[Markus Gaugusch]

On May 13, Sebastian Henschel <shensche-1rjuZeEg9oEb1SvskN2V4Q@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> on the other hand, this patch should not be necessary anyway. users
> should not patch part of their "bios" by themselves to get their system
> to work better. but this is how the situation currently looks like, as
> long as the vendors provide buggy DSDTs. i would consider the patch to
> be temporary, marked as soon-to-be-deleted. :)
Do you really think, that there will be no broken bios'es around any more
some day? Just a few weeks ago I fixed the dsdt of a 4 year old compaq
laptop. And I'm pretty sure that nobody will ever fix this DSDT at compaq
and provide a bios update ...

Another positive aspect of my patch is, that users can keep distribution
kernels and still override their DSDT. SuSE, Mandrake, etc. put a lot of
effort and good patches in their kernels and it is not always easy to
recompile them (at least it's very time consuming because of the huge
number of modules that is usually included). So, dsdt-in-initrd is one
reason less to compile your own kernel (or to be forced to do so).

Markus
-- 
__________________    /"\
Markus Gaugusch       \ /    ASCII Ribbon Campaign
markus-z+rTbpWsRgbk7+2FdBfRIA@public.gmane.org     X     Against HTML Mail
                      / \


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Re: RE: ACPI source releases updated (20030509)

[Christian Zoz]

On Tue, May 13, Markus Gaugusch wrote:
> Another positive aspect of my patch is, that users can keep distribution
> kernels and still override their DSDT. SuSE, Mandrake, etc. put a lot of
> effort and good patches in their kernels and it is not always easy to
> recompile them (at least it's very time consuming because of the huge
> number of modules that is usually included). So, dsdt-in-initrd is one
> reason less to compile your own kernel (or to be forced to do so).

I second that and would like to have that patch included very much.

-- 

ciao, christian

  --------------------------------------------------------------------
    Verglichen mit jedem x-beliebigen Redmonder Betriebssystem-Clone
    ist Linux geradezu eine leuchtende Perle der Datensicherheit.
  ------ Frank Rennemann (http://www.linux-knowledge-portal.org) -----


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Re: RE: ACPI source releases updated (20030509)

[Gunter Ohrner]

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Am Dienstag, 13. Mai 2003 10:54 schrieb Sebastian Henschel:
> i totally agree with that.

I do as well. I'm currently trying to get my DSDT fixed and was constantly 
re-compiling my kernel to test small changes until Markus' patch came along.

Greetings,

  Gunter

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Re: RE: ACPI source releases updated (20030509)

[Nathan Gray]

Sebastian Henschel wrote:
> on the other hand, this patch should not be necessary anyway. users
> should not patch part of their "bios" by themselves to get their system
> to work better. but this is how the situation currently looks like, as
> long as the vendors provide buggy DSDTs. i would consider the patch to
> be temporary, marked as soon-to-be-deleted. :)

I think I would like to see this patch included even if vendors supplied
perfectly good DSDTs.  It's kind of interesting to hack on these things and
it could allow the enterprising hacker to improve the functionality of her
machine.  For example, on my machine Dell has put almost every device on
interrupt 11 without giving me any way to change them.  I'm not an expert,
but from what I've seen in the ACPI spec I think it might be possible for
me to override this decision by hacking the DSDT.

In short, open source is all about hacking and so is this patch. :-)

I think the only criticism I have of this patch is that (IMVeryHO) it
doesn't strike me as suitable for long-term inclusion in the kernel.  I
imagine it would be better to allow the user to specify dsdt=/boot/dsdt.img
in the same way he specifies initrd=/boot/initrd.img so that these two
things can be kept cleanly separated.

Cheers,
-n8

-- 
>>>-- Nathaniel Gray -- Caltech Computer Science ------>
>>>-- Mojave Project -- http://mojave.cs.caltech.edu -->



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Re: Re: RE: ACPI source releases updated (20030509)

[Richard Black]

>> I think the only criticism I have of this patch is that (IMVeryHO) it
>> doesn't strike me as suitable for long-term inclusion in the kernel.  I
>> imagine it would be better to allow the user to specify dsdt=/boot/dsdt.img
>> in the same way he specifies initrd=/boot/initrd.img so that these two
>> things can be kept cleanly separated.


Better yet, I would like to see the mkinitrd modified so that it rolls 
in the dsdt table
into the initrd. It may make it (the modified dsdt table) easier to 
access later if
manual inspection of the initrd.img is required. This would be similar 
to the
recent changes to mkinitrd to include ext3 and jbd if any filesystems 
are using ext3.
Maybe a pointer to the current dsdt table could be kept in 
/etc/modules.conf:

#/etc/modules.conf
alias dsdt /boot/dsdt.img

Sincerely,
Richard Black



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Re: Re: RE: ACPI source releases updated (20030509)

[Ducrot Bruno]

On Tue, May 13, 2003 at 11:38:40AM -0700, Nathan Gray wrote:
> Sebastian Henschel wrote:
> > on the other hand, this patch should not be necessary anyway. users
> > should not patch part of their "bios" by themselves to get their system
> > to work better. but this is how the situation currently looks like, as
> > long as the vendors provide buggy DSDTs. i would consider the patch to
> > be temporary, marked as soon-to-be-deleted. :)
> 
> I think I would like to see this patch included even if vendors supplied
> perfectly good DSDTs.  It's kind of interesting to hack on these things and
> it could allow the enterprising hacker to improve the functionality of her
> machine.  For example, on my machine Dell has put almost every device on
> interrupt 11 without giving me any way to change them.  I'm not an expert,
> but from what I've seen in the ACPI spec I think it might be possible for
> me to override this decision by hacking the DSDT.
> 
> In short, open source is all about hacking and so is this patch. :-)
> 
> I think the only criticism I have of this patch is that (IMVeryHO) it
> doesn't strike me as suitable for long-term inclusion in the kernel.  I
> imagine it would be better to allow the user to specify dsdt=/boot/dsdt.img
> in the same way he specifies initrd=/boot/initrd.img so that these two
> things can be kept cleanly separated.

IMHO, it should be even better to have something like
acpi_tables=/boot/acpi_tables.img (not as a kernel option)

with different tables, not only DSDT.


-- 
Ducrot Bruno

--  Which is worse:  ignorance or apathy?
--  Don't know.  Don't care.


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