acer-wmi - Add documentation

00-INDEX

	- This file

acer-wmi.txt

	- information on the Acer Laptop WMI Extras driver.

sony-laptop.txt

	- Sony Notebook Control Driver (SNC) Readme.

sonypi.txt

Acer Laptop WMI Extras Driver

http://code.google.com/p/aceracpi

Version 0.1

9th February 2008

Copyright 2007-2008 Carlos Corbacho <carlos@strangeworlds.co.uk>

acer-wmi is a driver to allow you to control various parts of your Acer laptop

hardware under Linux which are exposed via ACPI-WMI.

This driver completely replaces the old out-of-tree acer_acpi, which I am

currently maintaining for bug fixes only on pre-2.6.25 kernels. All development

work is now focused solely on acer-wmi.

Disclaimer

**********

Acer and Wistron have provided nothing towards the development acer_acpi or

acer-wmi. All information we have has been through the efforts of the developers

and the users to discover as much as possible about the hardware.

As such, I do warn that this could break your hardware - this is extremely

unlikely of course, but please bear this in mind.

Background

**********

acer-wmi is derived from acer_acpi, originally developed by Mark

Smith in 2005, then taken over by Carlos Corbacho in 2007, in order to activate

the wireless LAN card under a 64-bit version of Linux, as acerhk[1] (the

previous solution to the problem) relied on making 32 bit BIOS calls which are

not possible in kernel space from a 64 bit OS.

[1] acerhk: http://www.cakey.de/acerhk/

Supported Hardware

******************

Please see the website for the current list of known working hardare:

http://code.google.com/p/aceracpi/wiki/SupportedHardware

If your laptop is not listed, or listed as unknown, and works with acer-wmi,

please contact me with a copy of the DSDT.

If your Acer laptop doesn't work with acer-wmi, I would also like to see the

DSDT.

To send me the DSDT, as root/sudo:

cat /sys/firmware/acpi/DSDT > dsdt

And send me the resulting 'dsdt' file.

Usage

*****

On Acer laptops, acer-wmi should already be autoloaded based on DMI matching.

For non-Acer laptops, until WMI based autoloading support is added, you will

need to manually load acer-wmi.

acer-wmi creates /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi, and fills it with various

files whose usage is detailed below, which enables you to control some of the

following (varies between models):

* the wireless LAN card radio

* inbuilt Bluetooth adapter

* inbuilt 3G card

* mail LED of your laptop

* brightness of the LCD panel

Wireless

********

With regards to wireless, all acer-wmi does is enable the radio on the card. It

is not responsible for the wireless LED - once the radio is enabled, this is

down to the wireless driver for your card. So the behaviour of the wireless LED,

once you enable the radio, will depend on your hardware and driver combination.

e.g. With the BCM4318 on the Acer Aspire 5020 series:

ndiswrapper: Light blinks on when transmitting

bcm43xx/b43: Solid light, blinks off when transmitting

Wireless radio control is unconditionally enabled - all Acer laptops that support

acer-wmi come with built-in wireless. However, should you feel so inclined to

ever wish to remove the card, or swap it out at some point, please get in touch

with me, as we may well be able to gain some data on wireless card detection.

To read the status of the wireless radio (0=off, 1=on):

cat /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/wireless

To enable the wireless radio:

echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/wireless

To disable the wireless radio:

echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/wireless

To set the state of the wireless radio when loading acer-wmi, pass:

wireless=X (where X is 0 or 1)

Bluetooth

*********

For bluetooth, this is an internal USB dongle, so once enabled, you will get

a USB device connection event, and a new USB device appears. When you disable

bluetooth, you get the reverse - a USB device disconnect event, followed by the

device disappearing again.

Bluetooth is autodetected by acer-wmi, so if you do not have a bluetooth module

installed in your laptop, this file won't exist (please be aware that it is

quite common for Acer not to fit bluetooth to their laptops - so just because

you have a bluetooth button on the laptop, doesn't mean that bluetooth is

installed).

For the adventurously minded - if you want to buy an internal bluetooth

module off the internet that is compatible with your laptop and fit it, then

it will work just fine with acer-wmi.

To read the status of the bluetooth module (0=off, 1=on):

cat /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/wireless

To enable the bluetooth module:

echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/bluetooth

To disable the bluetooth module:

echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/bluetooth

To set the state of the bluetooth module when loading acer-wmi, pass:

bluetooth=X (where X is 0 or 1)

3G

**

3G is currently not autodetected, so the 'threeg' file is always created under

sysfs. So far, no-one in possession of an Acer laptop with 3G built-in appears to

have tried Linux, or reported back, so we don't have any information on this.

If you have an Acer laptop that does have a 3G card in, please contact me so we

can properly detect these, and find out a bit more about them.

To read the status of the 3G card (0=off, 1=on):

cat /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg

To enable the 3G card:

echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg

To disable the 3G card:

echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg

To set the state of the 3G card when loading acer-wmi, pass:

threeg=X (where X is 0 or 1)

Mail LED

********

This can be found in most older Acer laptops supported by acer-wmi, and many

newer ones - it is built into the 'mail' button, and blinks when active.

On newer (WMID) laptops though, we have no way of detecting the mail LED. If

your laptop identifies itself in dmesg as a WMID model, then please try loading

acer_acpi with:

force_series=2490

This will use a known alternative method of reading/ writing the mail LED. If

it works, please report back to me with the DMI data from your laptop so this

can be added to acer-wmi.

The LED is exposed through the LED subsystem, and can be found in:

/sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/leds/acer-mail:green/

The mail LED is autodetected, so if you don't have one, the LED device won't

be registered.

If you have a mail LED that is not green, please report this to me.

Backlight

*********

The backlight brightness control is available on all acer-wmi supported

hardware. The maximum brightness level is usually 15, but on some newer laptops

it's 10 (this is again autodetected).

The backlight is exposed through the backlight subsystem, and can be found in:

/sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/backlight/acer-wmi/

Credits

*******

Olaf Tauber, who did the real hard work when he developed acerhk

http://www.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~tauber/acerhk

All the authors of laptop ACPI modules in the kernel, whose work

was an inspiration in the early days of acer_acpi

Mathieu Segaud, who solved the problem with having to modprobe the driver

twice in acer_acpi 0.2.

Jim Ramsay, who added support for the WMID interface

Mark Smith, who started the original acer_acpi

And the many people who have used both acer_acpi and acer-wmi.

	  wireless radio and bluetooth control, and on some laptops,

	  exposes the mail LED and LCD backlight.

	  For more information about this driver see

	  <file:Documentation/laptops/acer-wmi.txt>

	  If you have an ACPI-WMI compatible Acer/ Wistron laptop, say Y or M

	  here.