Issues with the sony-platform module

Hi,

I'm a user of the Sony VAIO VPCS12C5E and as such have always struggled with the Linux support of my laptop basically forever. Until now I've used the patch provided here [1], which worked quite well for some time. However since kernel version 3.3 I couldn't change the brightness of my screen anymore.

So I was quite glad to see that finally the patch was cleaned up and included upstream. Unfortunately it doesn't fix the issue with the brightness control, although the commit messages do say something about various fixes to the ACPI handling.

When loading the module with the debug option enabled I get the following message, which, I suppose, is related to the issue:

[ 2713.289135] sony_laptop: brightness ignored, must be controlled by

ACPI video driver

Probably I should add that I have a dedicated graphics card from Nvidia (310 M) and not - as many others - the integrated GPU.

Maybe, someone can look into this. I'm glad to provide some logs and test out patches, but other than that I can't do any good, I guess.

As already said the original patch from [1] worked fine with 3.1 (and 3.2 if I remember it rightly), so something within the kernel probably changed and broke the support of my hardware.

So, I've uploaded a dmesg log when loading the module with the debug option enabled and trying to change the brightness with the fn keys here [2]. Maybe this is already enough to nail the issue down. Otherwise just let me know what you would like to have.

Thanks in advance!

Best regards,
Karol Babioch

[1] https://code.google.com/p/vaio-f11-linux/wiki/KernelSupport
[2] http://pastebin.com/GRrtp024

This is not an issue with the platform driver but with the acpi video driver.

You can boot with acpi_backlight=vendor and get brightness control back but the issue with acpi_video remains.

...

please provide your laptop's DSDT table as well.

Thanks

mattia
:wq!

Hi,

it seems that the first version was blocked due to the attachments, which were quite big, so I'm resending this without any attachments this time. You'll find links to the files over on pastebin.mozilla.org.

Am 14.06.2012 22:39, schrieb Mattia Dongili:

Unfortunately that doesn't work either . According to the dmesg output the key presses itself get registered by the sony_module in both cases. However when booting with acpi_backlight=vendor I don't get any brightness control at all, whereas when booting without it the brightness indicator from Gnome 3 pops up whenever trying to change the brightness. But in both cases the actual brightness of the screen doesn't change.

I've attached a complete dmesg output of both cases (dmesg.log and dmesg_backlight_vendor.log). Alternatively you'll find both files over on pastebin.mozilla.org, see [1] and [2].

Maybe somewhat suspicious is the following line:

[    0.710585] [Firmware Bug]: ACPI: No _BQC method, cannot determine

initial brightness

It can be found in the dmesg output of both cases. As already said it had worked in the past. However I'm not entirely sure whether it was 3.2 or 3.3 that broke it. If it's important to know, let me know, and I'll recompile an old version of the kernel.

I've attached a disassembled version of the DSDT to this mail. However it is 449 KB in size, so I don't know whether it will get through . In case something doesn't work out, you'll find the file here [3].

Thanks in advance!

Best regards,
Karol Babioch

[1] http://pastebin.mozilla.org/1662565
[2] http://pastebin.mozilla.org/1662566
[3] http://pastebin.mozilla.org/1662564

you are running a 3.3 kernel with the latest sony-laptop patches, right? if so you will need this bug fix to get brightness control back:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg03294.html

could you please test it?

Thanks

mattia
:wq!

Hi,

Am 15.06.2012 13:36, schrieb Mattia Dongili:

Yeah, right. The 3.4.x series doesn't work for me at all as I get a black screen during boot. Will have to look into it. Probably has nothing to do with the sony_laptop module, however.

Basically I've just applied your patches from 3.5-rc2 to the 3.3.8 kernel. As only sony_laptop.c is modified, I thought it would be fine.

Am 15.06.2012 13:36, schrieb Mattia Dongili:

Sure, will let you know. Probably will take some time to compile, though.

Best regards,
Karol Babioch

Hi again,

Am 15.06.2012 13:36, schrieb Mattia Dongili:

Well, I've applied the patch (as well as the six others you submitted to Matthew since the inclusion into 3.5-rc1 found here [1]), but it still doesn't work. It's just the same as before. When booting without any special parameters I'll get the brightness pop up when pressing the appropriate fn keys.

With "acpi_backlight=vendor" I don't get this pop-up at all.

In both cases the actual brightness of the screen doesn't change.

I've once again uploaded the output of dmesg in both cases to pastebin.mozilla.org. You can find the version without any special boot parameters here [2] and the one with "acpi_backlight=vendor" here [3].

Anyway, thanks for your help so far. Any other clues?

Best regards,
Karol Babioch

[1] http://www.spinics.net/lists/platform-driver-x86/msg03384.html
[2] http://pastebin.mozilla.org/1662635
[3] http://pastebin.mozilla.org/1662636

ok, let's forget about gnome popups for a moment, can you try using the sysfs files directly?

i.e.:

$ grep .  /sys/class/backlight/sony/*
/sys/class/backlight/sony/actual_brightness:206
/sys/class/backlight/sony/bl_power:0
/sys/class/backlight/sony/brightness:206
/sys/class/backlight/sony/max_brightness:206
grep: /sys/class/backlight/sony/power: Is a directory
grep: /sys/class/backlight/sony/subsystem: Is a directory
/sys/class/backlight/sony/type:platform

$ echo 150 | sudo tee /sys/class/backlight/sony/brightness
150

Could you then include (in your mail please) the dmesg output after this test?

Thanks!

mattia
:wq!

Hi,

Am 16.06.2012 00:37, schrieb Mattia Dongili:

I suppose you expect me to use the "acpi_backlight=vendor" parameter? Because when leaving it out, I don't have any sony subdirectory within /sys/class/backlight. The only directory is /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0, but changing the brightness directly there doesn't change anything.

With the "acpi_backlight=vendor" boot paramater I got a sony sub directory (as well as a "nv" subdirectory), but see yourself:

[johnpatcher@vpcs ~]$ ls -l /sys/class/backlight/
insgesamt 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 16. Jun 2012 nv_backlight -> ../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.0/drm/card0/card0-LVDS-1/nv_backlight lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 16. Jun 01:00 sony -> ../../devices/virtual/backlight/sony

I tried to change the brightness via sysfs with the following command:

[root@vpcs sony]# cat actual_brightness brightness max_brightness -13
-13
242
[root@vpcs sony]# echo 150 > brightness

But nothing changed. dmesg reports the following:

[  419.046851] sony_laptop: found handle 0x0137 (offset: 0x0b)
[  419.169874] sony_laptop: __call_snc_method: [SN07:0x000000000000020b]
[  419.169877] sony_laptop: called SN07 with 0x020b (result: 0x0000)
[  423.710466] sony_laptop: found handle 0x0137 (offset: 0x0b)
[  423.834322] sony_laptop: __call_snc_method: [SN07:0x000000000000020b]
[  423.834324] sony_laptop: called SN07 with 0x020b (result: 0x0000)
[  456.260994] sony_laptop: found handle 0x0137 (offset: 0x0b)
[  456.384772] sony_laptop: __call_snc_method: [SN07:0x000000000000020b]
[  456.384774] sony_laptop: called SN07 with 0x020b (result: 0x0000)
[  461.256523] sony_laptop: found handle 0x0137 (offset: 0x0b)
[  461.386744] sony_laptop: __call_snc_method: [SN07:0x0000000000a3010b]
[  461.386746] sony_laptop: called SN07 with 0xa3010b (result: 0x0000)

Interestingly enough I can change the brightness via /sys/class/backlight/nv_backlight:

[root@vpcs nv_backlight]# cat actual_brightness brightness max_brightness 100
100
100
[root@vpcs nv_backlight]# echo 50 > brightness

By doing so, dmesg doesn't report anything, although the brightness is actually changing.

To be honest, I don't understand what is going on here. Why are there two backlight classes? Why does one work (but isn't registered to Gnome), while the other doesn't work? I suppose that there is still something wrong with the acpi video driver, as I have to append "acpi_backlight=vendor"?

Thanks so far. Hopefully you can make some sense out of this?

Best regards,
Karol Babioch

yes correct.

basically that vendor parameter forces acpi to give up backlight control to the platform driver.

This is a known issue (at least to me) but it shouldn't really be a problem as it existed for quite some time. Reading the brightness level at boot returns an uninitialized value so the driver displays that negative number. After echoing below you should see the actual value you set.

...

this looks ok. I'm wondering if the nouveau driver may be getting in the way somehow or if I broke backlight support in sony-laptop.

Can you try applying the sony-laptop patches on 3.2, boot with acpi_backlight=vendor and see what is the state there?

...

there are various (potentially conflicting) ways to control the brightness levels, acpi, platform and raw (via the video driver).

mattia
:wq!

Hi,

Am 16.06.2012 04:52, schrieb Mattia Dongili:

Ok. Just wanted you to see it.

I have no idea.

It behaves just like 3.3. What might be interesting is 3.1. Here some really strange values get returned:

[root@vpcs nv_backlight]# cat actual_brightness brightness max_brightness 1073864551
1073864551
1025

When setting brightness to something between 0 and 1025, the screen is basically black. At least there seems to be no backlight.

Any chance to get this thing sorted, so the right way of control will be reported to Gnome (or for that matter any other instance in control of brightness).

I'm currently trying to reconstruct the last version that worked for me. I'm quite sure that "vaio-full-3.0.4.patch" (from here [1]), worked fine with the 3.1.x branch. However I've just recompiled 3.1.10 and it doesn't seem to work. Anyway it worked without the "acpi_backlight=vendor" parameter, so I'm not quite sure whether this is of interest for you right now.

Best regards,
Karol Babioch

[1] http://www.absence.it/vaio-acpi/source/patches/?C=M;O=D

...

...

how about the sony-laptop stuff with 3.1+patches?
What is the output of

$ grep . /sys/class/backlight/*/*
$ grep . /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/*
and the kernel log after these two commands

I'm trying to understand is if the patch series I sent works for you on the last working version of kernel (i.e. 3.1 apparently).

...

it is actually. What did you have in the sony-laptop sysfs directories when booting with acpi_backlight=vendor?

Thanks!

mattia
:wq!

Hi,

Am 16.06.2012 15:07, schrieb Mattia Dongili:

Here you go:

/sys/class/backlight/nv_backlight/actual_brightness:1073864551 /sys/class/backlight/nv_backlight/bl_power:0 /sys/class/backlight/nv_backlight/brightness:1073864551 /sys/class/backlight/nv_backlight/max_brightness:1025 /sys/class/backlight/nv_backlight/type:raw /sys/class/backlight/sony/actual_brightness:-13 /sys/class/backlight/sony/bl_power:0 /sys/class/backlight/sony/brightness:-13 /sys/class/backlight/sony/max_brightness:242 /sys/class/backlight/sony/type:platform

/sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/battery_care_health:0 /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/battery_care_limiter:0 /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/handles:0x0100 0x0101 0x0105 0x0103 0x0114 0x011d 0x0122 0x0126 0x0134 0x0135 0x0136 0x0137 0x013a 0x0000 0x0000 0x0000 /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/kbd_backlight:1 /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/kbd_backlight_timeout:0 /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/modalias:platform:sony-laptop /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/thermal_control:balanced /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/thermal_profiles:balanced silent performance
/sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/touchpad:1 /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/uevent:DRIVER=sony-laptop /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/uevent:MODALIAS=platform:sony-laptop

[  296.031762] sony_laptop: found handle 0x0137 (offset: 0x0b)
[  296.146850] sony_laptop: __call_snc_method: [SN07:0x000000000000020b]
[  296.146852] sony_laptop: called SN07 with 0x020b (result: 0x0000)
[  304.972709] sony_laptop: found handle 0x0136 (offset: 0x0a)
[  304.973407] sony_laptop: __call_snc_method: [SN07:0x000000000000020a]
[  304.973412] sony_laptop: called SN07 with 0x020a (result: 0x0000)
[  304.973517] sony_laptop: found handle 0x0136 (offset: 0x0a)
[  304.974231] sony_laptop: __call_snc_method: [SN07:0x000000000000000a]
[  304.974235] sony_laptop: called SN07 with 0x000a (result: 0x0000)
[  304.974608] sony_laptop: found handle 0x0122 (offset: 0x06)
[  304.975082] sony_laptop: __call_snc_method: [SN07:0x0000000000000106]
[  304.975086] sony_laptop: called SN07 with 0x0106 (result: 0x0000)
[  304.975129] sony_laptop: found handle 0x0105 (offset: 0x02)
[  304.975681] sony_laptop: __call_snc_method: [SN07:0x0000000000000002]
[  304.975683] sony_laptop: called SN07 with 0x0002 (result: 0x0000)

No, it doesn't work neither on 3.0 nor on 3.1. Interestingly the original patch that definitely did work on 3.0 and 3.1. I'm not quite sure what is the reason for this. I've basically compiled every kernel version from 3.0 to 3.3 :(.

Unfortunately I don't know and can't reproduce a working solution here :(. Any clue why this could be?

Best regards,
Karol Babioch

Hi Karol

...

I'm a bit lost at this point. Are you saying that you cannot get a working backlight control with the old set-up you had?

If so what else did you change in your set up?
Also, any chance you could try to inspect/poke the acpi_video0 or sony-laptop backlight directories without loading the nouveau driver?

thanks

mattia
:wq!

Hi,

Am 17.06.2012 01:16, schrieb Mattia Dongili:

Yeah, I can't get it working. Tried nearly every kernel from 3.0 onwards. Don't know what is going on here :(. Any idea what could have caused this?

Well, I'm on Arch Linux, which is a rolling release distribution. So there is probably a lot of stuff, which has changed during the course of the last two to three months :(.

Yeah, sure. In both cases the brightness won't change. Here you have some excerpts in the case of "acpi_backlight=vendor" again:

[root@vpcs ~]# grep . /sys/class/backlight/sony/*/* /sys/class/backlight/sony/actual_brightness:-13 /sys/class/backlight/sony/bl_power:0 /sys/class/backlight/sony/brightness:-13 /sys/class/backlight/sony/max_brightness:242 /sys/class/backlight/sony/type:platform

I then echoed 100 to /sys/class/backlight/sony/brightness and dmesg reported the following:

[   89.631235] sony_laptop: found handle 0x0137 (offset: 0x0b)
[   89.753455] sony_laptop: __call_snc_method: [SN07:0x000000000000020b]
[   89.753457] sony_laptop: called SN07 with 0x020b (result: 0x0000)

Not sure what this means, but probably nouveau is not the culprit here.

Best regards,
Karol Babioch

the reason I'm asking is because from the DSDT the only reason why the calls to setting backlight would not work are due to

	If (LEqual (^IGPU.PBCC, One))
	{
and PBCC is defined in PCI_Config space (should be set by the video
driver or something like that?)
	Device (IGPU)
	{
	    Name (_ADR, Zero)
	    OperationRegion (GPPB, PCI_Config, 0xB4, 0x14)
	    Field (GPPB, ByteAcc, NoLock, Preserve)
	    {
		PBCI,   8,
		PBNP,   8,
		PBLS,   8,
		PBCC,   8,
		PBCM,   32,
		PBDI,   32,
		PBDO,   32,
		PBMX,   32
	    }

Can you also switch to the second video card (do you have one) and try if brightness regulation works?

Thanks

mattia
:wq!

Hi,

Am 19.06.2012 00:19, schrieb Mattia Dongili:

No, unfortunately I can't. The second video card is the one integrated into the CPU. There is no way for me to switch to it.This is reserved for the more expensive Z series. So I'm forced to use the NVIDIA one.

Best regards,
Karol Babioch

so ACPI video driver is used before 3.3 and it works? please try this patch
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/attachment.cgi?id=73576
and boot without acpi_backlight=vendor and see if it helps.

thanks,
rui

Hi,

Am 19.06.2012 02:59, schrieb Zhang Rui:

First of all: Unfortunately I still can't change the brightness. But I couldn't reproduce a working solution with 3.3 and earlier (although it definitely worked with 3.0/3.1 at some point in the past), so it probably isn't your fault.

But the patch fixes another huge problem: It finally let's me boot a 3.4 kernel with KMS enabled. Beforehand I would get a black/blank screen with kernels 3.4 and higher. This was some kind of a regression, as I've experienced this kind of issue also with 2.6.38 and earlier. The bug is filed here [1] and there are quite a few people affected by it. So, thanks a lot for that!

Best regards,
Karol Babioch

[1] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50175