Re: [PATCH 07/32] acpi-video-detect: Rewrite backlight interface selection logic

[Jani Nikula <jani.nikula@linux.intel.com>]

On Thu, 11 Jun 2015, Hans de Goede <hdegoede@redhat.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 11-06-15 11:19, Pali Rohár wrote:
>> On Wednesday 10 June 2015 15:01:07 Hans de Goede wrote:
>>> Currently we have 2 kernel commandline options + dmi-quirks in 3 places all
>>> interacting (in interesting ways) to select which which backlight interface
>>> to use. On the commandline we've acpi_backlight=[video|vendor] and
>>> video.use_native_backlight=[0|1]. DMI quirks we have in
>>> acpi/video-detect.c, acpi/video.c and drivers/platform/x86/*.c .
>>>
>>> This commit is the first step to cleaning this up, replacing the 2 cmdline
>>> options with just acpi_video.backlight=[video|vendor|native|none], and
>>> adding a new API to video_detect.c to reflect this.
>>>
>>> Follow up commits will also move other related code, like unregistering the
>>> acpi_video backlight interface if it was registered before other drivers
>>> which take priority over it are loaded, to video_detect.c where this
>>> logic really belongs.
>>>
>>> Signed-off-by: Hans de Goede <hdegoede@redhat.com>
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> lot of people are using acpi_backlight parameter in kernel cmdline to
>> fix some of problems. I would like to see this parameter still working
>> and to not break existing configuration. E.g acpi_backlight=vendor to
>> use dell-laptop.ko or thinkpad_acpi.ko backlight.
>
> I would have like to keep acpi_backlight= for that exact same reason,
> but that is not possible while keeping acpi_video as a module.
>
> Thinking more about this, this is not strictly true, we could make
> some other (core) part of the acpi code use __setup to get the
> acpi_backlight= value and have that part export the value for use
> in the acpi_video module. This is not really pretty, but I think it
> may be the best way to solve this.

It just might be a good idea to try to not change the backlight related
parameters all the time... See [1]. I probably forgot a few.

BR,
Jani.

[1] http://nikula.org/~jani/backlight/#index11h2


>
>> It is still nightmare to get laptop panel backlight working on different
>> (broken) laptops
>
> Well one reason it is a nightmare is because there are too many
> backlight drivers fighting for control and there is not an easy
> way to tell the kernel only register this one, this is exactly
> what this patch-set is trying to address :)  People may still
> need to use a cmdline option but now there is only one option to
> play with.
>
>  > and people learnt to try to use acpi_backlight
>  > parameter for quit/hot fixing these problems.
>
> People who need to pass a kernel commandline option really should
> report a bug once they have figured out what option to use.
>
> Fedora users are getting pretty good at this as the Fedora kernel
> maintainers punt all such bug reports to me and I properly deal
> with them verifying the users solution is sane and then submitting
> a patch with a dmi based quirk for the users laptop upstream.
>
>  > Upgrading kernel (if you
>> remove acpi_backlight parameter) just break it again.
>
> I think that is actually (partially) a good thing, as said people
> who rely on cmdline workarounds should file bugs, so that we can
> add a quirk. Had the users done so, the quirk would be long in
> place and the changing of the cmdline option name would not be
> an issue for them.
>
> I realize that this knife cuts both ways, and that this will
> cause unhappy users, as said if it had been possible to not change
> the cmdline option name in a clean way I would have done so.
>
> If everyone agrees with the solution I've outlined above, we
> can actually make it so as to not break things for users
> who's setup relies on acpi_backlight=foo
>
> Regards,
>
> Hans
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-- 
Jani Nikula, Intel Open Source Technology Center