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Carlos Corbacho16111c72008-02-09 01:32:25 +00001Acer Laptop WMI Extras Driver
2http://code.google.com/p/aceracpi
3Version 0.1
49th February 2008
5
6Copyright 2007-2008 Carlos Corbacho <carlos@strangeworlds.co.uk>
7
8acer-wmi is a driver to allow you to control various parts of your Acer laptop
9hardware under Linux which are exposed via ACPI-WMI.
10
11This driver completely replaces the old out-of-tree acer_acpi, which I am
12currently maintaining for bug fixes only on pre-2.6.25 kernels. All development
13work is now focused solely on acer-wmi.
14
15Disclaimer
16**********
17
18Acer and Wistron have provided nothing towards the development acer_acpi or
19acer-wmi. All information we have has been through the efforts of the developers
20and the users to discover as much as possible about the hardware.
21
22As such, I do warn that this could break your hardware - this is extremely
23unlikely of course, but please bear this in mind.
24
25Background
26**********
27
28acer-wmi is derived from acer_acpi, originally developed by Mark
29Smith in 2005, then taken over by Carlos Corbacho in 2007, in order to activate
30the wireless LAN card under a 64-bit version of Linux, as acerhk[1] (the
31previous solution to the problem) relied on making 32 bit BIOS calls which are
32not possible in kernel space from a 64 bit OS.
33
34[1] acerhk: http://www.cakey.de/acerhk/
35
36Supported Hardware
37******************
38
39Please see the website for the current list of known working hardare:
40
41http://code.google.com/p/aceracpi/wiki/SupportedHardware
42
43If your laptop is not listed, or listed as unknown, and works with acer-wmi,
44please contact me with a copy of the DSDT.
45
46If your Acer laptop doesn't work with acer-wmi, I would also like to see the
47DSDT.
48
49To send me the DSDT, as root/sudo:
50
51cat /sys/firmware/acpi/DSDT > dsdt
52
53And send me the resulting 'dsdt' file.
54
55Usage
56*****
57
58On Acer laptops, acer-wmi should already be autoloaded based on DMI matching.
59For non-Acer laptops, until WMI based autoloading support is added, you will
60need to manually load acer-wmi.
61
62acer-wmi creates /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi, and fills it with various
63files whose usage is detailed below, which enables you to control some of the
64following (varies between models):
65
66* the wireless LAN card radio
67* inbuilt Bluetooth adapter
68* inbuilt 3G card
69* mail LED of your laptop
70* brightness of the LCD panel
71
72Wireless
73********
74
75With regards to wireless, all acer-wmi does is enable the radio on the card. It
76is not responsible for the wireless LED - once the radio is enabled, this is
77down to the wireless driver for your card. So the behaviour of the wireless LED,
78once you enable the radio, will depend on your hardware and driver combination.
79
80e.g. With the BCM4318 on the Acer Aspire 5020 series:
81
82ndiswrapper: Light blinks on when transmitting
Adrian Bunk2079fcd2008-03-04 15:26:12 -080083b43: Solid light, blinks off when transmitting
Carlos Corbacho16111c72008-02-09 01:32:25 +000084
85Wireless radio control is unconditionally enabled - all Acer laptops that support
86acer-wmi come with built-in wireless. However, should you feel so inclined to
87ever wish to remove the card, or swap it out at some point, please get in touch
88with me, as we may well be able to gain some data on wireless card detection.
89
90To read the status of the wireless radio (0=off, 1=on):
91cat /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/wireless
92
93To enable the wireless radio:
94echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/wireless
95
96To disable the wireless radio:
97echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/wireless
98
99To set the state of the wireless radio when loading acer-wmi, pass:
100wireless=X (where X is 0 or 1)
101
102Bluetooth
103*********
104
105For bluetooth, this is an internal USB dongle, so once enabled, you will get
106a USB device connection event, and a new USB device appears. When you disable
107bluetooth, you get the reverse - a USB device disconnect event, followed by the
108device disappearing again.
109
110Bluetooth is autodetected by acer-wmi, so if you do not have a bluetooth module
111installed in your laptop, this file won't exist (please be aware that it is
112quite common for Acer not to fit bluetooth to their laptops - so just because
113you have a bluetooth button on the laptop, doesn't mean that bluetooth is
114installed).
115
116For the adventurously minded - if you want to buy an internal bluetooth
117module off the internet that is compatible with your laptop and fit it, then
118it will work just fine with acer-wmi.
119
120To read the status of the bluetooth module (0=off, 1=on):
121cat /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/wireless
122
123To enable the bluetooth module:
124echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/bluetooth
125
126To disable the bluetooth module:
127echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/bluetooth
128
129To set the state of the bluetooth module when loading acer-wmi, pass:
130bluetooth=X (where X is 0 or 1)
131
1323G
133**
134
1353G is currently not autodetected, so the 'threeg' file is always created under
136sysfs. So far, no-one in possession of an Acer laptop with 3G built-in appears to
137have tried Linux, or reported back, so we don't have any information on this.
138
139If you have an Acer laptop that does have a 3G card in, please contact me so we
140can properly detect these, and find out a bit more about them.
141
142To read the status of the 3G card (0=off, 1=on):
143cat /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg
144
145To enable the 3G card:
146echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg
147
148To disable the 3G card:
149echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg
150
151To set the state of the 3G card when loading acer-wmi, pass:
152threeg=X (where X is 0 or 1)
153
154Mail LED
155********
156
157This can be found in most older Acer laptops supported by acer-wmi, and many
158newer ones - it is built into the 'mail' button, and blinks when active.
159
160On newer (WMID) laptops though, we have no way of detecting the mail LED. If
161your laptop identifies itself in dmesg as a WMID model, then please try loading
162acer_acpi with:
163
164force_series=2490
165
166This will use a known alternative method of reading/ writing the mail LED. If
167it works, please report back to me with the DMI data from your laptop so this
168can be added to acer-wmi.
169
170The LED is exposed through the LED subsystem, and can be found in:
171
172/sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/leds/acer-mail:green/
173
174The mail LED is autodetected, so if you don't have one, the LED device won't
175be registered.
176
177If you have a mail LED that is not green, please report this to me.
178
179Backlight
180*********
181
182The backlight brightness control is available on all acer-wmi supported
183hardware. The maximum brightness level is usually 15, but on some newer laptops
184it's 10 (this is again autodetected).
185
186The backlight is exposed through the backlight subsystem, and can be found in:
187
188/sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/backlight/acer-wmi/
189
190Credits
191*******
192
193Olaf Tauber, who did the real hard work when he developed acerhk
194http://www.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~tauber/acerhk
195All the authors of laptop ACPI modules in the kernel, whose work
196was an inspiration in the early days of acer_acpi
197Mathieu Segaud, who solved the problem with having to modprobe the driver
198twice in acer_acpi 0.2.
199Jim Ramsay, who added support for the WMID interface
200Mark Smith, who started the original acer_acpi
201
202And the many people who have used both acer_acpi and acer-wmi.