Re: can't seem to ignore a battery

[Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>]

On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 01:43:44PM -0500, Paul Fox wrote:
> well, this probably isn't the right list.  but you asked.  :-)
> 
> the XO-1 didn't use ACPI under linux.  it did have some minimal
> DSDT support in openfirmware to support Windows [1], in the form
> of simple battery reporting.  for the XO-1.5, the decision was
> made to fully support ACPI, so among other things, yours truly
> has been enhancing our DSDT support to support the lid, the ebook
> switch, etc, and trying to get the EC events tied in.  one of the
> things still on the list is to make the battery support more
> correct -- someone tried powertop on a 1.5 XO said it reported 35W
> being used.  i don't think that sounds right. :-)  so work needs
> to be done there.  if there are any DSDT experts in the house,
> i'd love to hear from you, if only for fielding occasional
> questions.
> 
> the CONFIG_POWER_SUPPLY-based battery driver we used on XO-1
> still works fine on XO-1.5, and correctly reports our (accurate)
> charge counter, and our (accurate) capacity level.  we need the
> charge_counter value in particular, as it's used in all of our
> power analysis scripts.  i confess i'm hazy on the details right
> now, but the way our charge counting works isn't directly
> translatable to the values that ACPI provides -- it's a frame of
> reference issue, having to do with where or when "full" is
> assumed to be.  richard smith and i have gone through it in the
> past -- i just can't remember right now.  eventually we need to
> figure out how to get the old values to come out of the new
> driver, but this is why i was hoping i could get udev to ignore
> the device -- we need it for some specific purposes, but don't
> necessarily want most "normal" code to have to deal with it.
> 
> i'd actually be tempted to simply use the old battery driver
> (i.e., turn off CONFIG_ACPI_BATTERY), but it would of course be
> nice if things like powertop and g-p-m worked.

Well as things will not work properly anyway, I would suggest this
option as well.  It's the easiest for you to do right now, and seems to
solve your root problems until you get your acpi code up and running
properly.

thanks,

greg k-h