Re: [lm-sensors] Could the k8temp driver be interfering with ACPI?

Bjorn Helgaas
2007-04-15T20:31:53Z

On Sunday 15 April 2007 03:41, Jean Delvare wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Apr 2007 14:59:45 -0600, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
> > Of course, there are always BIOS defects. But if we could make a
> > case that a BIOS that doesn't declare the resources used by the AML
> > is defective, we could add quirks to reserve the undeclared resources.
>
> Only realistic if the list of systems needing a quirk is small. Do you
> think that would be the case?

I don't know. I confess that I don't clearly understand the problem
yet. It sounds like the sensor drivers want to talk to hardware that
ACPI methods might also use.

But I missed the details, such as the specific devices in question,
which ports they use, how they are described in ACPI, which AML
methods use those ports, and which non-ACPI drivers also use them.

It also sounds like the non-ACPI drivers provide much more
functionality than ACPI exposes. I'd like to understand this,
too, because an obvious way to solve the problem would be to
drop the non-ACPI drivers. Is this extra functionality available
on Windows? If so, do we know whether Windows uses non-ACPI drivers
or whether they have some smarter way to use ACPI? In the long
run, I think the easiest, most reliable route would be to use the
system in a similar way. Then we'd be doing things the way the
manufacturer intended and we'd take advantage of all the Windows-
focused firmware testing.

Bjorn