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Carlos Corbacho16111c72008-02-09 01:32:25 +00001Acer Laptop WMI Extras Driver
2http://code.google.com/p/aceracpi
Carlos Corbacho7d9a06d2008-10-08 21:40:26 +01003Version 0.2
418th August 2008
Carlos Corbacho16111c72008-02-09 01:32:25 +00005
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
Carlos Corbacho08816462008-03-12 20:12:55 +000051cat /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/DSDT > dsdt
Carlos Corbacho16111c72008-02-09 01:32:25 +000052
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
Carlos Corbacho7d9a06d2008-10-08 21:40:26 +010090The wireless radio is exposed through rfkill.
Carlos Corbacho16111c72008-02-09 01:32:25 +000091
92Bluetooth
93*********
94
95For bluetooth, this is an internal USB dongle, so once enabled, you will get
96a USB device connection event, and a new USB device appears. When you disable
97bluetooth, you get the reverse - a USB device disconnect event, followed by the
98device disappearing again.
99
100Bluetooth is autodetected by acer-wmi, so if you do not have a bluetooth module
101installed in your laptop, this file won't exist (please be aware that it is
102quite common for Acer not to fit bluetooth to their laptops - so just because
103you have a bluetooth button on the laptop, doesn't mean that bluetooth is
104installed).
105
106For the adventurously minded - if you want to buy an internal bluetooth
107module off the internet that is compatible with your laptop and fit it, then
108it will work just fine with acer-wmi.
109
Carlos Corbacho7d9a06d2008-10-08 21:40:26 +0100110Bluetooth is exposed through rfkill.
Carlos Corbacho16111c72008-02-09 01:32:25 +0000111
1123G
113**
114
1153G is currently not autodetected, so the 'threeg' file is always created under
116sysfs. So far, no-one in possession of an Acer laptop with 3G built-in appears to
117have tried Linux, or reported back, so we don't have any information on this.
118
119If you have an Acer laptop that does have a 3G card in, please contact me so we
120can properly detect these, and find out a bit more about them.
121
122To read the status of the 3G card (0=off, 1=on):
123cat /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg
124
125To enable the 3G card:
126echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg
127
128To disable the 3G card:
129echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg
130
131To set the state of the 3G card when loading acer-wmi, pass:
132threeg=X (where X is 0 or 1)
133
134Mail LED
135********
136
137This can be found in most older Acer laptops supported by acer-wmi, and many
138newer ones - it is built into the 'mail' button, and blinks when active.
139
140On newer (WMID) laptops though, we have no way of detecting the mail LED. If
141your laptop identifies itself in dmesg as a WMID model, then please try loading
142acer_acpi with:
143
144force_series=2490
145
146This will use a known alternative method of reading/ writing the mail LED. If
147it works, please report back to me with the DMI data from your laptop so this
148can be added to acer-wmi.
149
150The LED is exposed through the LED subsystem, and can be found in:
151
Carlos Corbacho343c0042008-02-24 13:34:18 +0000152/sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/leds/acer-wmi::mail/
Carlos Corbacho16111c72008-02-09 01:32:25 +0000153
154The mail LED is autodetected, so if you don't have one, the LED device won't
155be registered.
156
Carlos Corbacho16111c72008-02-09 01:32:25 +0000157Backlight
158*********
159
160The backlight brightness control is available on all acer-wmi supported
161hardware. The maximum brightness level is usually 15, but on some newer laptops
162it's 10 (this is again autodetected).
163
164The backlight is exposed through the backlight subsystem, and can be found in:
165
166/sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/backlight/acer-wmi/
167
168Credits
169*******
170
171Olaf Tauber, who did the real hard work when he developed acerhk
172http://www.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~tauber/acerhk
173All the authors of laptop ACPI modules in the kernel, whose work
174was an inspiration in the early days of acer_acpi
175Mathieu Segaud, who solved the problem with having to modprobe the driver
176twice in acer_acpi 0.2.
177Jim Ramsay, who added support for the WMID interface
178Mark Smith, who started the original acer_acpi
179
180And the many people who have used both acer_acpi and acer-wmi.