Re: [PATCH] [RESEND] Add Dell laptop backlight brightness display

From: Michael E Brown
Date: Thu Feb 23 2006 - 00:16:20 EST


On Mon, 2006-02-20 at 17:53 +0100, Pavel Machek wrote:
> Hi!
>
> > Matthew has shown up on the libsmbios-devel mailing list. I sent
> > all the
> > info needed to do a test of Dell LCD brightness control. The main thing
> > left
> > would be to make one utility out of the current separate, unsupported,
> > test
> > utils.
> >
> > As for fixing i8k, I don't have the slightest clue where to
> > begin. You
> > either have to split initialization with userspace to parse and send in
> > the
> > correct io/magic ports to do SMI, or you have to put Dell-specific SMI
> > token
> > parsing in the kernel.
>
> What is wrong with Dell-specific SMI parsing in kernel? Is it _that_
> much code?
>

Pavel,
Sorry for the late response.

No, it isn't that much code. You are welcome to rip the parsing from
libsmbios. There are about three or so C structs necessary to parse it.
The total code is probably about 30-40 lines. (see
libraries/token/TokenDA.cpp, and libraries/common/TokenLowLevel.h).

My only point is that _everything_ that this module does can now be
completely and fully implemented in userspace using dcdbas and
libsmbios. I'm not against fixing the current i8k code, though. I don't
have the time to submit a patch myself, but would be happy to help any
interested volunteers.
--
Michael

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