Compal EFL30 ACPI

Compal EFL30 ACPI

[Dow_Hurst]

I have a rather new laptop from Compal called an EFL30.  I've noticed that ACPI seems pretty well supported in SUSE 9.3 running the 2.6.11 kernel.  I do have some mouse timing issues but haven't proceeded very far in trying out fixes such as fiddling with the battery status check timings.  I have been able to suspend to RAM based on closing the lid.  I have not yet tried suspend to disk.  No thermal stats are available.  The battery reports status and will warn me in a shell when at a low battery state that I can specify.  I've tried XP just to see the dark side and their really isn't alot of difference.  The mouse issue and thermal control are probably the most useful fixes I'd like to work out.  I did see that the CPU under XP was running at ~750MHz instead of 1.86GHz.  I am pretty sure this doesn't happen under SUSE 9.3.

What type of info would be helpful to post so this laptop can be more fully supported?  Just extract the DSDT and post it?


Any advice on fixing the current timing and CPU control issues?

Thanks,
Dow


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Re: Compal EFL30 ACPI

[foo_bar_baz_boo-acpi-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w]

--- Dow_Hurst <dhurst-mn4gwa5WIIQysxA8WJXlww@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> I'd like to work out.  I did see that the CPU under XP was running at
> ~750MHz instead of 1.86GHz.  I am pretty sure this doesn't happen
> under SUSE 9.3.

Right. That's probably a sign that you do not have the 2.6.xx cpufreq
CPU speed adjustment drivers present in that SuSE kernel of yours. If
you enable AMD PowerNow / Intel SpeedStep cpufreq drivers, this problem
will go away. Then, if you want to control the speed, download
cpufreqd, which will let you set up everything just exactly how you
want it using cpufreqd.conf.

> Thanks,
> Dow

HTH!


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Re: Compal EFL30 ACPI

[Erik Slagter]

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On Tue, 2005-09-06 at 09:29 -0700, foo_bar_baz_boo-acpi-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org wrote:
> --- Dow_Hurst <dhurst-mn4gwa5WIIQysxA8WJXlww@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > I'd like to work out.  I did see that the CPU under XP was running at
> > ~750MHz instead of 1.86GHz.  I am pretty sure this doesn't happen
> > under SUSE 9.3.
> 
> Right. That's probably a sign that you do not have the 2.6.xx cpufreq
> CPU speed adjustment drivers present in that SuSE kernel of yours. If
> you enable AMD PowerNow / Intel SpeedStep cpufreq drivers, this problem
> will go away. Then, if you want to control the speed, download
> cpufreqd, which will let you set up everything just exactly how you
> want it using cpufreqd.conf.

I was under the impression that the "acpi" cpufreq driver was
preferable.

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Re: Compal EFL30 ACPI

[Bruno Ducrot]

On Wed, Sep 07, 2005 at 10:33:07AM +0200, Erik Slagter wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-09-06 at 09:29 -0700, foo_bar_baz_boo-acpi-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org wrote:
> > --- Dow_Hurst <dhurst-mn4gwa5WIIQysxA8WJXlww@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > > I'd like to work out.  I did see that the CPU under XP was running at
> > > ~750MHz instead of 1.86GHz.  I am pretty sure this doesn't happen
> > > under SUSE 9.3.
> > 
> > Right. That's probably a sign that you do not have the 2.6.xx cpufreq
> > CPU speed adjustment drivers present in that SuSE kernel of yours. If
> > you enable AMD PowerNow / Intel SpeedStep cpufreq drivers, this problem
> > will go away. Then, if you want to control the speed, download
> > cpufreqd, which will let you set up everything just exactly how you
> > want it using cpufreqd.conf.
> 
> I was under the impression that the "acpi" cpufreq driver was
> preferable.

You were wrong.

-- 
Bruno Ducrot

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


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Re: Compal EFL30 ACPI

[Erik Slagter]

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On Wed, 2005-09-07 at 11:18 +0200, Bruno Ducrot wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 07, 2005 at 10:33:07AM +0200, Erik Slagter wrote:
> > > Right. That's probably a sign that you do not have the 2.6.xx cpufreq
> > > CPU speed adjustment drivers present in that SuSE kernel of yours. If
> > > you enable AMD PowerNow / Intel SpeedStep cpufreq drivers, this problem
> > > will go away. Then, if you want to control the speed, download
> > > cpufreqd, which will let you set up everything just exactly how you
> > > want it using cpufreqd.conf.
> > 
> > I was under the impression that the "acpi" cpufreq driver was
> > preferable.
> 
> You were wrong.

Can please someone elaborate?

I remember to have read that it's best to use the acpi method for
frequency scaling, unless that's not available?! Also I suppose acpi
knows best how to drive it's own hardware?

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Re: Compal EFL30 ACPI

[Bruno Ducrot]

On Wed, Sep 07, 2005 at 11:23:58AM +0200, Erik Slagter wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-09-07 at 11:18 +0200, Bruno Ducrot wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 07, 2005 at 10:33:07AM +0200, Erik Slagter wrote:
> > > > Right. That's probably a sign that you do not have the 2.6.xx cpufreq
> > > > CPU speed adjustment drivers present in that SuSE kernel of yours. If
> > > > you enable AMD PowerNow / Intel SpeedStep cpufreq drivers, this problem
> > > > will go away. Then, if you want to control the speed, download
> > > > cpufreqd, which will let you set up everything just exactly how you
> > > > want it using cpufreqd.conf.
> > > 
> > > I was under the impression that the "acpi" cpufreq driver was
> > > preferable.
> > 
> > You were wrong.
> 
> Can please someone elaborate?
> 
> I remember to have read that it's best to use the acpi method for
> frequency scaling, unless that's not available?! Also I suppose acpi
> knows best how to drive it's own hardware?

The cpufreq ACPI IO driver use some ioports (as its name suggest) in
order to perform p-state transition.  Those ioports likely trigger
an SMM trap which means that some propritary BIOS code will be run.
It's fine to do so, but the problem is that there will be more latencies
just to put the processor under SMM.  It's also fine to do so on older
platforms, since anyway the latency introduced by putting the processor
in SMM will be low compared to the time taken for a transition.  But
this will become too high on, say, centrino platforms.

Cheers,

-- 
Bruno Ducrot

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


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Re: Compal EFL30 ACPI

[Stefan Seyfried]

On Tue, Sep 06, 2005 at 09:29:19AM -0700, foo_bar_baz_boo wrote:
> > I'd like to work out.  I did see that the CPU under XP was running at
> > ~750MHz instead of 1.86GHz.  I am pretty sure this doesn't happen
> > under SUSE 9.3.
> 
> Right. That's probably a sign that you do not have the 2.6.xx cpufreq
> CPU speed adjustment drivers present in that SuSE kernel of yours. If

No. This is all built as modules and works out of the box on most machines
with SUSE 9.3.

> you enable AMD PowerNow / Intel SpeedStep cpufreq drivers, this problem
> will go away. Then, if you want to control the speed, download
> cpufreqd, which will let you set up everything just exactly how you
> want it using cpufreqd.conf.

Or just use the installed powersaved which will do this just fine. No
need to download anything.
-- 
Stefan Seyfried



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Re: Compal EFL30 ACPI

[Bruno Ducrot]

On Tue, Sep 06, 2005 at 11:54:20AM -0400, Dow_Hurst wrote:
> I have a rather new laptop from Compal called an EFL30.  I've noticed that ACPI seems pretty well supported in SUSE 9.3 running the 2.6.11 kernel.  I do have some mouse timing issues but haven't proceeded very far in trying out fixes such as fiddling with the battery status check timings.  I have been able to suspend to RAM based on closing the lid.  I have not yet tried suspend to disk.  No thermal stats are available.  The battery reports status and will warn me in a shell when at a low battery state that I can specify.  I've tried XP just to see the dark side and their really isn't alot of difference.  The mouse issue and thermal control are probably the most useful fixes I'd like to work out.  I did see that the CPU under XP was running at ~750MHz instead of 1.86GHz.  I am pretty sure this doesn't happen under SUSE 9.3.
> 
> What type of info would be helpful to post so this laptop can be more fully supported?  Just extract the DSDT and post it?
> 
> 
> Any advice on fixing the current timing and CPU control issues?
> 

Not related to those problems, there are some supports for compal laptops
via the omnibook kernel module at http://www.sf.net/projects/omke
You may want to check if by chance that work for you.

Cheers,

-- 
Bruno Ducrot

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


-------------------------------------------------------
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September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle Practices
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Security * Process Improvement & Measurement * http://www.sqe.com/bsce5sf

Re: Compal EFL30 ACPI

[Thomas Renninger]

Dow_Hurst wrote:
...
>  No thermal stats are available.
...
That means /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/ is empty even thermal module is loaded?
Could you send me acpidmp output, please or put it somewhere in the web and link to it?
I have a machine with the same symptom, I wonder whether it's the same problem.
> 
> What type of info would be helpful to post so this laptop can be more fully supported?  Just extract the DSDT and post it?
Hopefully.

Thanks,

      Thomas


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