This driver has been submitted (almost unchanged) on lkml and on acpi-devel twice, first on July 21, 2004, then again on
September 17, 2004. It has been quietly ignored.
Privately I've had many positive feedbacks from users of this driver
(and no negative feedback), including Linux distributions who wish
to include it into their kernels. The reports are increasing in number,
it would seem that newer Sony Vaios are more and more incompatible
with sonypi and require sony_acpi to control the screen brightness.
+static int debug = 0;
+module_param(debug, int, 0);
+MODULE_PARM_DESC(debug,"set this to 1 (and RTFM) if you want to help the development of this driver");
+static struct acpi_driver sony_acpi_driver = {
+ name: ACPI_SNC_DRIVER_NAME,
+ class: ACPI_SNC_CLASS,
+ ids: ACPI_SNC_HID,
+ ops: {
+ add: sony_acpi_add,
+ remove: sony_acpi_remove,
+ },
+};
+ printk(KERN_WARNING "acpi_callreadfunc failed\n");
+static int parse_buffer(const char __user *buffer, unsigned long count, int *val) {
+ char s[32];
+
+ if (count > 31)
+ return -EINVAL;
+ if (copy_from_user(s, buffer, count))
+ return -EFAULT;
+ s[count] = 0;
+ if (sscanf(s, "%i", val) != 1)
--- /dev/null 2005-02-10 10:35:32.824183288 +0100
+++ linux-2.6-stelian/Documentation/sony_acpi.txt 2005-01-31 17:00:09.000000000 +0100
+You should start by trying the sonypi driver, which does
+all this and many other things. But the sonypi driver does
+not work on all sonypi laptops, whereas sony_acpi should +work everywhere.
+Loading the sony_acpi.ko module will create a /proc/acpi/sony/
+directory populated with a couple of files (only one for the
+moment).
+For example:
+ # echo "1" > /proc/acpi/sony/brt
+config ACPI_SONY
+ tristate "Sony Laptop Extras" + depends on X86
+ depends on ACPI_INTERPRETER
+ default m
+ ---help---
+ This mini-driver drives the ACPI SNC device present in the
+ ACPI BIOS of the Sony Vaio laptops.
+
+ It gives access to some extra laptop functionalities. In
+ its current form, the only thing this driver does is letting + the user set or query the screen brightness.
+
+ Read <Documentation/sony_acpi.txt> for more information.