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1 | Acer Laptop WMI Extras Driver |
2 | http://code.google.com/p/aceracpi | |
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3 | Version 0.2 |
4 | 18th August 2008 | |
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5 | |
6 | Copyright 2007-2008 Carlos Corbacho <carlos@strangeworlds.co.uk> | |
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 | ||
39 | Please see the website for the current list of known working hardare: | |
40 | ||
41 | http://code.google.com/p/aceracpi/wiki/SupportedHardware | |
42 | ||
43 | If your laptop is not listed, or listed as unknown, and works with acer-wmi, | |
44 | please contact me with a copy of the DSDT. | |
45 | ||
46 | If your Acer laptop doesn't work with acer-wmi, I would also like to see the | |
47 | DSDT. | |
48 | ||
49 | To send me the DSDT, as root/sudo: | |
50 | ||
08816465 | 51 | cat /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/DSDT > dsdt |
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52 | |
53 | And send me the resulting 'dsdt' file. | |
54 | ||
55 | Usage | |
56 | ***** | |
57 | ||
58 | On Acer laptops, acer-wmi should already be autoloaded based on DMI matching. | |
59 | For non-Acer laptops, until WMI based autoloading support is added, you will | |
60 | need to manually load acer-wmi. | |
61 | ||
62 | acer-wmi creates /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi, and fills it with various | |
63 | files whose usage is detailed below, which enables you to control some of the | |
64 | following (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 | ||
72 | Wireless | |
73 | ******** | |
74 | ||
75 | With regards to wireless, all acer-wmi does is enable the radio on the card. It | |
76 | is not responsible for the wireless LED - once the radio is enabled, this is | |
77 | down to the wireless driver for your card. So the behaviour of the wireless LED, | |
78 | once you enable the radio, will depend on your hardware and driver combination. | |
79 | ||
80 | e.g. With the BCM4318 on the Acer Aspire 5020 series: | |
81 | ||
82 | ndiswrapper: Light blinks on when transmitting | |
2079fcdc | 83 | b43: Solid light, blinks off when transmitting |
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84 | |
85 | Wireless radio control is unconditionally enabled - all Acer laptops that support | |
86 | acer-wmi come with built-in wireless. However, should you feel so inclined to | |
87 | ever wish to remove the card, or swap it out at some point, please get in touch | |
88 | with me, as we may well be able to gain some data on wireless card detection. | |
89 | ||
7d9a06de | 90 | The wireless radio is exposed through rfkill. |
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91 | |
92 | Bluetooth | |
93 | ********* | |
94 | ||
95 | For bluetooth, this is an internal USB dongle, so once enabled, you will get | |
96 | a USB device connection event, and a new USB device appears. When you disable | |
97 | bluetooth, you get the reverse - a USB device disconnect event, followed by the | |
98 | device disappearing again. | |
99 | ||
100 | Bluetooth is autodetected by acer-wmi, so if you do not have a bluetooth module | |
101 | installed in your laptop, this file won't exist (please be aware that it is | |
102 | quite common for Acer not to fit bluetooth to their laptops - so just because | |
103 | you have a bluetooth button on the laptop, doesn't mean that bluetooth is | |
104 | installed). | |
105 | ||
106 | For the adventurously minded - if you want to buy an internal bluetooth | |
107 | module off the internet that is compatible with your laptop and fit it, then | |
108 | it will work just fine with acer-wmi. | |
109 | ||
7d9a06de | 110 | Bluetooth is exposed through rfkill. |
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111 | |
112 | 3G | |
113 | ** | |
114 | ||
115 | 3G is currently not autodetected, so the 'threeg' file is always created under | |
116 | sysfs. So far, no-one in possession of an Acer laptop with 3G built-in appears to | |
117 | have tried Linux, or reported back, so we don't have any information on this. | |
118 | ||
119 | If you have an Acer laptop that does have a 3G card in, please contact me so we | |
120 | can properly detect these, and find out a bit more about them. | |
121 | ||
122 | To read the status of the 3G card (0=off, 1=on): | |
123 | cat /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg | |
124 | ||
125 | To enable the 3G card: | |
126 | echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg | |
127 | ||
128 | To disable the 3G card: | |
129 | echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg | |
130 | ||
131 | To set the state of the 3G card when loading acer-wmi, pass: | |
132 | threeg=X (where X is 0 or 1) | |
133 | ||
134 | Mail LED | |
135 | ******** | |
136 | ||
137 | This can be found in most older Acer laptops supported by acer-wmi, and many | |
138 | newer ones - it is built into the 'mail' button, and blinks when active. | |
139 | ||
140 | On newer (WMID) laptops though, we have no way of detecting the mail LED. If | |
141 | your laptop identifies itself in dmesg as a WMID model, then please try loading | |
142 | acer_acpi with: | |
143 | ||
144 | force_series=2490 | |
145 | ||
146 | This will use a known alternative method of reading/ writing the mail LED. If | |
147 | it works, please report back to me with the DMI data from your laptop so this | |
148 | can be added to acer-wmi. | |
149 | ||
150 | The LED is exposed through the LED subsystem, and can be found in: | |
151 | ||
343c0042 | 152 | /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/leds/acer-wmi::mail/ |
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153 | |
154 | The mail LED is autodetected, so if you don't have one, the LED device won't | |
155 | be registered. | |
156 | ||
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157 | Backlight |
158 | ********* | |
159 | ||
160 | The backlight brightness control is available on all acer-wmi supported | |
161 | hardware. The maximum brightness level is usually 15, but on some newer laptops | |
162 | it's 10 (this is again autodetected). | |
163 | ||
164 | The backlight is exposed through the backlight subsystem, and can be found in: | |
165 | ||
166 | /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/backlight/acer-wmi/ | |
167 | ||
168 | Credits | |
169 | ******* | |
170 | ||
171 | Olaf Tauber, who did the real hard work when he developed acerhk | |
172 | http://www.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~tauber/acerhk | |
173 | All the authors of laptop ACPI modules in the kernel, whose work | |
174 | was an inspiration in the early days of acer_acpi | |
175 | Mathieu Segaud, who solved the problem with having to modprobe the driver | |
176 | twice in acer_acpi 0.2. | |
177 | Jim Ramsay, who added support for the WMID interface | |
178 | Mark Smith, who started the original acer_acpi | |
179 | ||
180 | And the many people who have used both acer_acpi and acer-wmi. |