Carlos Corbacho | 16111c7 | 2008-02-09 01:32:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1 | Acer Laptop WMI Extras Driver |
| 2 | http://code.google.com/p/aceracpi |
Carlos Corbacho | 4f0175d | 2009-04-04 09:33:39 +0100 | [diff] [blame] | 3 | Version 0.3 |
| 4 | 4th April 2009 |
Carlos Corbacho | 16111c7 | 2008-02-09 01:32:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 5 | |
Carlos Corbacho | 4f0175d | 2009-04-04 09:33:39 +0100 | [diff] [blame] | 6 | Copyright 2007-2009 Carlos Corbacho <carlos@strangeworlds.co.uk> |
Carlos Corbacho | 16111c7 | 2008-02-09 01:32:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 7 | |
| 8 | acer-wmi is a driver to allow you to control various parts of your Acer laptop |
| 9 | hardware under Linux which are exposed via ACPI-WMI. |
| 10 | |
| 11 | This driver completely replaces the old out-of-tree acer_acpi, which I am |
| 12 | currently maintaining for bug fixes only on pre-2.6.25 kernels. All development |
| 13 | work is now focused solely on acer-wmi. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | Disclaimer |
| 16 | ********** |
| 17 | |
| 18 | Acer and Wistron have provided nothing towards the development acer_acpi or |
| 19 | acer-wmi. All information we have has been through the efforts of the developers |
| 20 | and the users to discover as much as possible about the hardware. |
| 21 | |
| 22 | As such, I do warn that this could break your hardware - this is extremely |
| 23 | unlikely of course, but please bear this in mind. |
| 24 | |
| 25 | Background |
| 26 | ********** |
| 27 | |
| 28 | acer-wmi is derived from acer_acpi, originally developed by Mark |
| 29 | Smith in 2005, then taken over by Carlos Corbacho in 2007, in order to activate |
| 30 | the wireless LAN card under a 64-bit version of Linux, as acerhk[1] (the |
| 31 | previous solution to the problem) relied on making 32 bit BIOS calls which are |
| 32 | not possible in kernel space from a 64 bit OS. |
| 33 | |
| 34 | [1] acerhk: http://www.cakey.de/acerhk/ |
| 35 | |
| 36 | Supported Hardware |
| 37 | ****************** |
| 38 | |
Carlos Corbacho | 4f0175d | 2009-04-04 09:33:39 +0100 | [diff] [blame] | 39 | NOTE: The Acer Aspire One is not supported hardware. It cannot work with |
| 40 | acer-wmi until Acer fix their ACPI-WMI implementation on them, so has been |
| 41 | blacklisted until that happens. |
| 42 | |
Matt LaPlante | 19f5946 | 2009-04-27 15:06:31 +0200 | [diff] [blame^] | 43 | Please see the website for the current list of known working hardware: |
Carlos Corbacho | 16111c7 | 2008-02-09 01:32:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 44 | |
| 45 | http://code.google.com/p/aceracpi/wiki/SupportedHardware |
| 46 | |
| 47 | If your laptop is not listed, or listed as unknown, and works with acer-wmi, |
| 48 | please contact me with a copy of the DSDT. |
| 49 | |
| 50 | If your Acer laptop doesn't work with acer-wmi, I would also like to see the |
| 51 | DSDT. |
| 52 | |
| 53 | To send me the DSDT, as root/sudo: |
| 54 | |
Carlos Corbacho | 0881646 | 2008-03-12 20:12:55 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 55 | cat /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/DSDT > dsdt |
Carlos Corbacho | 16111c7 | 2008-02-09 01:32:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 56 | |
| 57 | And send me the resulting 'dsdt' file. |
| 58 | |
| 59 | Usage |
| 60 | ***** |
| 61 | |
| 62 | On Acer laptops, acer-wmi should already be autoloaded based on DMI matching. |
| 63 | For non-Acer laptops, until WMI based autoloading support is added, you will |
| 64 | need to manually load acer-wmi. |
| 65 | |
| 66 | acer-wmi creates /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi, and fills it with various |
| 67 | files whose usage is detailed below, which enables you to control some of the |
| 68 | following (varies between models): |
| 69 | |
| 70 | * the wireless LAN card radio |
| 71 | * inbuilt Bluetooth adapter |
| 72 | * inbuilt 3G card |
| 73 | * mail LED of your laptop |
| 74 | * brightness of the LCD panel |
| 75 | |
| 76 | Wireless |
| 77 | ******** |
| 78 | |
| 79 | With regards to wireless, all acer-wmi does is enable the radio on the card. It |
| 80 | is not responsible for the wireless LED - once the radio is enabled, this is |
| 81 | down to the wireless driver for your card. So the behaviour of the wireless LED, |
| 82 | once you enable the radio, will depend on your hardware and driver combination. |
| 83 | |
| 84 | e.g. With the BCM4318 on the Acer Aspire 5020 series: |
| 85 | |
| 86 | ndiswrapper: Light blinks on when transmitting |
Adrian Bunk | 2079fcd | 2008-03-04 15:26:12 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 87 | b43: Solid light, blinks off when transmitting |
Carlos Corbacho | 16111c7 | 2008-02-09 01:32:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 88 | |
| 89 | Wireless radio control is unconditionally enabled - all Acer laptops that support |
| 90 | acer-wmi come with built-in wireless. However, should you feel so inclined to |
| 91 | ever wish to remove the card, or swap it out at some point, please get in touch |
| 92 | with me, as we may well be able to gain some data on wireless card detection. |
| 93 | |
Carlos Corbacho | 7d9a06d | 2008-10-08 21:40:26 +0100 | [diff] [blame] | 94 | The wireless radio is exposed through rfkill. |
Carlos Corbacho | 16111c7 | 2008-02-09 01:32:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 95 | |
| 96 | Bluetooth |
| 97 | ********* |
| 98 | |
| 99 | For bluetooth, this is an internal USB dongle, so once enabled, you will get |
| 100 | a USB device connection event, and a new USB device appears. When you disable |
| 101 | bluetooth, you get the reverse - a USB device disconnect event, followed by the |
| 102 | device disappearing again. |
| 103 | |
| 104 | Bluetooth is autodetected by acer-wmi, so if you do not have a bluetooth module |
| 105 | installed in your laptop, this file won't exist (please be aware that it is |
| 106 | quite common for Acer not to fit bluetooth to their laptops - so just because |
| 107 | you have a bluetooth button on the laptop, doesn't mean that bluetooth is |
| 108 | installed). |
| 109 | |
| 110 | For the adventurously minded - if you want to buy an internal bluetooth |
| 111 | module off the internet that is compatible with your laptop and fit it, then |
| 112 | it will work just fine with acer-wmi. |
| 113 | |
Carlos Corbacho | 7d9a06d | 2008-10-08 21:40:26 +0100 | [diff] [blame] | 114 | Bluetooth is exposed through rfkill. |
Carlos Corbacho | 16111c7 | 2008-02-09 01:32:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 115 | |
| 116 | 3G |
| 117 | ** |
| 118 | |
| 119 | 3G is currently not autodetected, so the 'threeg' file is always created under |
| 120 | sysfs. So far, no-one in possession of an Acer laptop with 3G built-in appears to |
| 121 | have tried Linux, or reported back, so we don't have any information on this. |
| 122 | |
| 123 | If you have an Acer laptop that does have a 3G card in, please contact me so we |
| 124 | can properly detect these, and find out a bit more about them. |
| 125 | |
| 126 | To read the status of the 3G card (0=off, 1=on): |
| 127 | cat /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg |
| 128 | |
| 129 | To enable the 3G card: |
| 130 | echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg |
| 131 | |
| 132 | To disable the 3G card: |
| 133 | echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg |
| 134 | |
| 135 | To set the state of the 3G card when loading acer-wmi, pass: |
| 136 | threeg=X (where X is 0 or 1) |
| 137 | |
| 138 | Mail LED |
| 139 | ******** |
| 140 | |
| 141 | This can be found in most older Acer laptops supported by acer-wmi, and many |
| 142 | newer ones - it is built into the 'mail' button, and blinks when active. |
| 143 | |
| 144 | On newer (WMID) laptops though, we have no way of detecting the mail LED. If |
| 145 | your laptop identifies itself in dmesg as a WMID model, then please try loading |
| 146 | acer_acpi with: |
| 147 | |
| 148 | force_series=2490 |
| 149 | |
| 150 | This will use a known alternative method of reading/ writing the mail LED. If |
| 151 | it works, please report back to me with the DMI data from your laptop so this |
| 152 | can be added to acer-wmi. |
| 153 | |
| 154 | The LED is exposed through the LED subsystem, and can be found in: |
| 155 | |
Carlos Corbacho | 343c004 | 2008-02-24 13:34:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 156 | /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/leds/acer-wmi::mail/ |
Carlos Corbacho | 16111c7 | 2008-02-09 01:32:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 157 | |
| 158 | The mail LED is autodetected, so if you don't have one, the LED device won't |
| 159 | be registered. |
| 160 | |
Carlos Corbacho | 16111c7 | 2008-02-09 01:32:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 161 | Backlight |
| 162 | ********* |
| 163 | |
| 164 | The backlight brightness control is available on all acer-wmi supported |
| 165 | hardware. The maximum brightness level is usually 15, but on some newer laptops |
| 166 | it's 10 (this is again autodetected). |
| 167 | |
| 168 | The backlight is exposed through the backlight subsystem, and can be found in: |
| 169 | |
| 170 | /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/backlight/acer-wmi/ |
| 171 | |
| 172 | Credits |
| 173 | ******* |
| 174 | |
| 175 | Olaf Tauber, who did the real hard work when he developed acerhk |
| 176 | http://www.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~tauber/acerhk |
| 177 | All the authors of laptop ACPI modules in the kernel, whose work |
| 178 | was an inspiration in the early days of acer_acpi |
| 179 | Mathieu Segaud, who solved the problem with having to modprobe the driver |
| 180 | twice in acer_acpi 0.2. |
| 181 | Jim Ramsay, who added support for the WMID interface |
| 182 | Mark Smith, who started the original acer_acpi |
| 183 | |
| 184 | And the many people who have used both acer_acpi and acer-wmi. |