From owner-freebsd-current Thu Jan 16 10:52:52 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 83EB437B406 for ; Thu, 16 Jan 2003 10:52:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from heron.mail.pas.earthlink.net (heron.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.189]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0D16243F13 for ; Thu, 16 Jan 2003 10:52:43 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from tlambert2@mindspring.com) Received: from pool0018.cvx21-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net ([209.179.192.18] helo=mindspring.com) by heron.mail.pas.earthlink.net with asmtp (SSLv3:RC4-MD5:128) (Exim 3.33 #1) id 18ZF7w-00032v-00; Thu, 16 Jan 2003 10:52:33 -0800 Message-ID: <3E26FF19.77C7600E@mindspring.com> Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2003 10:51:05 -0800 From: Terry Lambert X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Joel M. Baldwin" Cc: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: bad ACPL asl's on motherboards References: <98766849.1042697265@[192.168.1.20]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-ELNK-Trace: b1a02af9316fbb217a47c185c03b154d40683398e744b8a4558b6c9122506ba1a8f36f4ee876687f93caf27dac41a8fd350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG "Joel M. Baldwin" wrote: > I gather that there are quite a few Motherboards with bad ACPI asl's > on them. I know that my Abit BP6 sure has problems. As a result I > can't run ACPI. > > What are those of us with these motherboards supposed to to? > > I realize that we can use acpidump to get the asl, correct it, > and then recompile it using iasl from the acpicatools port, to > generate the aml that can be used during boot. There are several things you can do, one of which is what you have suggested, though you do not go far enough: 1) Correct the ASL, make a file modification so that FreeBSD can run on the system with the incorrect ASL, and then *notify the motherboard and BIOS vendors of the correction, and the reason for it*. 2) The ASL works *fine* with the Windows ACPI code; *correct* the FreeBSD code so that it *also* works fine for FreeBSD (i.e. if the FreeBSD code were a line-for-line duplicate of the Windows code, then FreeBSD would not be having these problems, where Windows does not, would it...). 3) Find a way to detect these failure modes and, if they are detected, fall back to the pre-ACPI code that FreeBSD used to use; it's in the source tree, after all. But all of these require that you *do* something. Personally, I've been following option #1; there's also a "1(B)" that you could add, which is to inform the project of the modified ASL, which would also require: i) providing some method of identifying the motherboard and BIOS revisions, and therefore the need for the code (the same identification required in #3 ii) donate this code to the FreeBSD project IMO, this approach is counter-productive, and undermines #2, which is, I think, the correct approach ("Be strict in the data you create, and liberal in the data you accept"). -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message