plans for toshiba_acpi

Here are my plans for enhancing the "toshiba_acpi" driver, and imploding the "/proc/acpi/toshiba" interface.

* incorporate ACPI hotkeys patch developed by Daniel Silverstone and used in Ubuntu Linux. Available as a run-time option, this creates a kernel thread which polls the Toshiba firmware for hotkey events, and passes them along to the ACPI subsystem.

* incorporate /dev/toshiba emulation patch developed by Gintautas Miliauskas and Charles Schwieters. Available as a run-time option, this causes toshiba_acpi to implement the "toshiba" driver's /dev/toshiba interface (except for hotkey status). This device provides access to the Toshiba HCI, which can be employed by userspace tools such as "toshset" to adjust a laptop's internal Bluetooth device, display, fan, etc. This patch has been in use since early 2004 by several users. Regarding module auto-loading, OS's will have to resolve the ambiguity of which driver to load (toshiba or toshiba_acpi) when /dev/toshiba is accessed.

* add run-time option to suppress creation of /proc/acpi/toshiba. Since the above two options cover the existing /proc/acpi/toshiba interface
and more, the proc interface can be disabled once userspace tools catch up.

Please follow up on <[email protected]>.

--John

Hi,

Since the hotkey values for brightness up and brightness down are identical on Toshiba laptops, it would also make sense to let the kernel thread trigger the appropriate SCI command. This way no user space tool would be required for this purpose any longer.

[...]

See you,

Timo

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Is it not possible to have a combined kernel module that can determine whether the ACPI subsystem is running or not and fall back to the old style system if it is not. The only messy bit I see here is that you would need some #ifdef's to cater for when ACPI is not enabled for a

I have no particular desire to perpetuate the toshiba kernel driver as it is now, and it has always been my long term goal to do this. It has only been held up due to problems in running a 2.6 kernel on my laptop. The system is entirely hosted with LVM and XFS and early attempts at getting it working where unsucessful.

If someone else with the time wishes to merge the two Toshiba drivers far be it for me to stand in their way.

JAB.

Jonathan A. Buzzard                 Email: jonathan (at) buzzard.me.uk
Northumberland, United Kingdom.       Tel: +44 1661-832195