Support of sonypi module/code

Support of sonypi module/code

[Lee Packham]

Am I going to be treading on anybody's toes if I release a patch for the
sonypi module to add battery and AC power information support?

The reason is thus, to stop the fan spinning all the time on my laptop I
have to use ACPI (I have a Vaio FX-103). It doesn't work great, but it
works...

ACPI can't report battery info. Nor can APM!

You have to use the Programmable Interrupts thing to get them out of the
system. I wrote a program that did this (vaiod) on a polling interval to
set my screen brightness automagically but I would have to poll things
manually. It would be great to do this though /dev/sonypi.

It doesn't look like the code has been updated for ages. So is anybody
going to complain if I do it?

Lee Packham

Re: Support of sonypi module/code

[Stelian Pop]

On Sat, Dec 08, 2001 at 08:40:30AM -0000, Lee Packham wrote:

> Am I going to be treading on anybody's toes if I release a patch for the
> sonypi module to add battery and AC power information support?

Mines. The driver _is_ maintained.

> The reason is thus, to stop the fan spinning all the time on my laptop I
> have to use ACPI (I have a Vaio FX-103). It doesn't work great, but it
> works...
> 
> ACPI can't report battery info. Nor can APM!

The latest versions of ACPI work pretty well, if it doesn't work
for you it must be because of buggy ACPI bios. At least in my case,
I found out that flashing a newer bios (look out for bioses that
support Windows XP on the sony site) solves most of the problems.

> You have to use the Programmable Interrupts thing to get them out of the
> system. I wrote a program that did this (vaiod) on a polling interval to
> set my screen brightness automagically but I would have to poll things
> manually. It would be great to do this though /dev/sonypi.

Why not. We already do this with ioctls for brightness control.

> It doesn't look like the code has been updated for ages. So is anybody
> going to complain if I do it?

Your significance of 'ages' must be different that mines... 

Stelian.
-- 
Stelian Pop <stelian.pop@fr.alcove.com>
|---------------- Free Software Engineer -----------------|
| Alcôve - http://www.alcove.com - Tel: +33 1 49 22 68 00 |
|------------- Alcôve, liberating software ---------------|

Re: Support of sonypi module/code

[Pavel Machek]

Hi!

> Am I going to be treading on anybody's toes if I release a patch for the
> sonypi module to add battery and AC power information support?

Releasing patch to l-k is *always* okay, as long as you don't mail it
linus or marcelo for inclusion.
								Pavel
-- 
"I do not steal MS software. It is not worth it."
                                -- Pavel Kankovsky

Re: Support of sonypi module/code

[Stelian Pop]

On Sun, Dec 09, 2001 at 11:13:33PM +0100, Pavel Machek wrote:

> > Am I going to be treading on anybody's toes if I release a patch for the
> > sonypi module to add battery and AC power information support?
> 
> Releasing patch to l-k is *always* okay, as long as you don't mail it
> linus or marcelo for inclusion.

Indeed. However, sending a copy to the known maintainer of the code
in question is always a good idea.

Stelian.
-- 
Stelian Pop <stelian.pop@fr.alcove.com>
|---------------- Free Software Engineer -----------------|
| Alcôve - http://www.alcove.com - Tel: +33 1 49 22 68 00 |
|------------- Alcôve, liberating software ---------------|