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1Acer Laptop WMI Extras Driver
2http://code.google.com/p/aceracpi
3Version 0.3
44th April 2009
5
6Copyright 2007-2009 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
39NOTE: The Acer Aspire One is not supported hardware. It cannot work with
40acer-wmi until Acer fix their ACPI-WMI implementation on them, so has been
41blacklisted until that happens.
42
43Please see the website for the current list of known working hardware:
44
45http://code.google.com/p/aceracpi/wiki/SupportedHardware
46
47If your laptop is not listed, or listed as unknown, and works with acer-wmi,
48please contact me with a copy of the DSDT.
49
50If your Acer laptop doesn't work with acer-wmi, I would also like to see the
51DSDT.
52
53To send me the DSDT, as root/sudo:
54
55cat /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/DSDT > dsdt
56
57And send me the resulting 'dsdt' file.
58
59Usage
60*****
61
62On Acer laptops, acer-wmi should already be autoloaded based on DMI matching.
63For non-Acer laptops, until WMI based autoloading support is added, you will
64need to manually load acer-wmi.
65
66acer-wmi creates /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi, and fills it with various
67files whose usage is detailed below, which enables you to control some of the
68following (varies between models):
69
70* the wireless LAN card radio
71* inbuilt Bluetooth adapter
72* inbuilt 3G card
73* mail LED of your laptop
74* brightness of the LCD panel
75
76Wireless
77********
78
79With regards to wireless, all acer-wmi does is enable the radio on the card. It
80is not responsible for the wireless LED - once the radio is enabled, this is
81down to the wireless driver for your card. So the behaviour of the wireless LED,
82once you enable the radio, will depend on your hardware and driver combination.
83
84e.g. With the BCM4318 on the Acer Aspire 5020 series:
85
86ndiswrapper: Light blinks on when transmitting
87b43: Solid light, blinks off when transmitting
88
89Wireless radio control is unconditionally enabled - all Acer laptops that support
90acer-wmi come with built-in wireless. However, should you feel so inclined to
91ever wish to remove the card, or swap it out at some point, please get in touch
92with me, as we may well be able to gain some data on wireless card detection.
93
94The wireless radio is exposed through rfkill.
95
96Bluetooth
97*********
98
99For bluetooth, this is an internal USB dongle, so once enabled, you will get
100a USB device connection event, and a new USB device appears. When you disable
101bluetooth, you get the reverse - a USB device disconnect event, followed by the
102device disappearing again.
103
104Bluetooth is autodetected by acer-wmi, so if you do not have a bluetooth module
105installed in your laptop, this file won't exist (please be aware that it is
106quite common for Acer not to fit bluetooth to their laptops - so just because
107you have a bluetooth button on the laptop, doesn't mean that bluetooth is
108installed).
109
110For the adventurously minded - if you want to buy an internal bluetooth
111module off the internet that is compatible with your laptop and fit it, then
112it will work just fine with acer-wmi.
113
114Bluetooth is exposed through rfkill.
115
1163G
117**
118
1193G is currently not autodetected, so the 'threeg' file is always created under
120sysfs. So far, no-one in possession of an Acer laptop with 3G built-in appears to
121have tried Linux, or reported back, so we don't have any information on this.
122
123If you have an Acer laptop that does have a 3G card in, please contact me so we
124can properly detect these, and find out a bit more about them.
125
126To read the status of the 3G card (0=off, 1=on):
127cat /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg
128
129To enable the 3G card:
130echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg
131
132To disable the 3G card:
133echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/threeg
134
135To set the state of the 3G card when loading acer-wmi, pass:
136threeg=X (where X is 0 or 1)
137
138Mail LED
139********
140
141This can be found in most older Acer laptops supported by acer-wmi, and many
142newer ones - it is built into the 'mail' button, and blinks when active.
143
144On newer (WMID) laptops though, we have no way of detecting the mail LED. If
145your laptop identifies itself in dmesg as a WMID model, then please try loading
146acer_acpi with:
147
148force_series=2490
149
150This will use a known alternative method of reading/ writing the mail LED. If
151it works, please report back to me with the DMI data from your laptop so this
152can be added to acer-wmi.
153
154The LED is exposed through the LED subsystem, and can be found in:
155
156/sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/leds/acer-wmi::mail/
157
158The mail LED is autodetected, so if you don't have one, the LED device won't
159be registered.
160
161Backlight
162*********
163
164The backlight brightness control is available on all acer-wmi supported
165hardware. The maximum brightness level is usually 15, but on some newer laptops
166it's 10 (this is again autodetected).
167
168The backlight is exposed through the backlight subsystem, and can be found in:
169
170/sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/backlight/acer-wmi/
171
172Credits
173*******
174
175Olaf Tauber, who did the real hard work when he developed acerhk
176http://www.cakey.de/acerhk/
177All the authors of laptop ACPI modules in the kernel, whose work
178was an inspiration in the early days of acer_acpi
179Mathieu Segaud, who solved the problem with having to modprobe the driver
180twice in acer_acpi 0.2.
181Jim Ramsay, who added support for the WMID interface
182Mark Smith, who started the original acer_acpi
183
184And the many people who have used both acer_acpi and acer-wmi.