[Utnubu-maintainers] Re: [Utnubu-discuss] ACPI Stuff

[Reinhard Tartler]

On 7/30/05, Joachim Breitner <nomeata at debian.org> wrote:
> > Many parts are highly dependend of the available ACPI Patches in the
> > Debian Kernel Images, of which I am uninformed. Perhaps it would be
> > best, if a member, or at least someone tracking development of debian
> > kernels closely could assess, if it is worth providing these scripts
> > as package of its own, or if they are rather examples for people with
> > custom kernels.
> 
> Woudn't it be nicer if these scripts would find out about the available
> features and just do the right things? This functionality would benefit
> Ubuntu, too, as their users might also use different kernels with
> differen features. So, maybe Thom would be willing to help in extending
> acpi-support to be so flexible that it works with all the availabe
> features out of the box on Ubuntu and Debian.

You are right, this would be ideal! The last time I looked deeper into
details with acpi support, the situation was rather mixed. There are
several extensions to linux acpi like ibm-acpi (but also for other
notebooks like toshiba or asus) offering different set of features
like hotkey support or sometimes fan contron. ibm-acpi for example
offers access to the think light via /proc/acpi/ibm/light on supported
models.

I think these interfaces are quite in flux and there was (or still is?
havn't watched since then) ongoing work, to simplify at least the
situation with hot keys. This would simplify acpi-support heavily. But
I don't know what the situation is atm and what the attitude of the
debian kernel team is towards patches to the acpi system in debian
kernels.

I try to find some time in the next weeks to have a deeper look into
current sid kernels to see what acpi features are supported.

-- 
regards,
    Reinhard