Tuesday, December 4, 2007

acpi acer hotkey pooler for my amilo

Recently I've started a fork of the acer_acpi kernel module to also pool the 3 hotkeys.
On another note, the patch I've made for acerhk was finally entered the mainstream.

I've moved on to acer_acpi since it supports 64bit distros as well.

I'm up to my ears in homeworks and projects (last year to end my undergraduate degree - yeppieee) so it will probably go gold by May 08.

Work notes:
1) listen for _Q10 (wireless key) event - after it is done, also add the browser and fancy fan buttons.
2) rig the wireless button to run the wireless activation/deactivation method in acer_acpi
3) ask for merge and go mainstream.

some of (1) has already been done.

This will also make the lives of Amilo LI1718 owners much easier...

UPDATE 8/12/07: current work is posted on http://fscamiloa16xx.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/acer_acpi_hkey/
The AML Method PHSR change the values of INF (button id) ,BCMD (0x8B = button pressed) and SMIC (0x00/0xff). When loading this module with debug=4 and press one of the 3 buttons, you'll see (in dmesg) that it sensed the key press. Bad news, SMIC is not updated to 0 as expected and therefore it will act as if the button is being pressed over and over again. Some mutexes are MIA and should be added. acpi-devel list seems to be inactive - so I'll keep searching for a way to acquire an AML mutex...

12 comments:

Andy McMaster said...

Hi,

You helped me out with getting my 1718 working on the amilo forums. However I can't seem to get the script to work under Gutsy. When it applies the patch (0.35) to acerhk.c it fails to compile. I can sort out some of the patch errors but not all.

really appreciate you may be busy at the moment (did my Masters last year so know how you feel!) but it would be great if you could have a look at this please?

Cheers

Andy

DamagedSpline said...

Some of the patch I've made to the acerhk kernel module went upstream, so only a part of it is needed..

What I did for now is to remove the patch from the script. After I'll have some time to play with it I'll add the missing bits.

So for now, you could fetch the latest script version from http://fscamiloa16xx.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/fsca16xx.sh
and run it in setup mode. that should be it...

Andy McMaster said...

Hi again,

I downloaded the script, ran it with remove first, then with setup. It seem to run past the acerhk stuff ok with no compile errors. It fails, for me at least, loading ndiswrapper. So I load that manually and it shows the net5211:driver installed.

After logging out, if I press the wireless button it comes on but the message bottom right is 'wireless dactivated'. Press it again, same message. Nothing shows for the wireless when I do ifconfig or iwconfig.

Any suggestions, please? I'm going away on the 20th and need my laptop with working wireless :-)

Cheers

Andy

DamagedSpline said...

Andy,

Lets trace-n'-fix the issues:


1) make sure that you find the following lines (order is not important) in /etc/modules that says
acerhk
ndiswrapper


if you can't find it, add it manually.


2) make sure that you find the line in /etc/modprobe.d/options that says

options acerhk force_series=6805 autowlan=1

if you can't find it, add it manually.


3) make sure that you find a line in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist that says

blacklist ath_pci

if you can't find it, add it manually.


4) regarding the "Wireless deactivated" message... sadly, it requires a part of the my patch that was not excepted into to the current version of acerhk... so for now, you can ignore the message. as long as the wireless led gets on/off you're on the safe side. to remove the notifications you should uninstall the following package:

hotkeys


please let me know if its working for you, well, it should any way... :)

Andy McMaster said...

Hi,

1) make sure that you find the following lines (order is not important) in /etc/modules that says
acerhk
ndiswrapper

Both present

2) make sure that you find the line in /etc/modprobe.d/options that says

options acerhk force_series=6805 autowlan=1

Line present

3) make sure that you find a line in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist that says

blacklist ath_pci

if you can't find it, add it manually.

This was missing so added manually


please let me know if its working for you, well, it should any way... :)

When I run ndiswrapper -l I get driver installed but no hardware is shown as present.

So still not working...

This is really annoying as it all worked fine under Feisty :-)

Really appreciate you taking the time to look at this.

Cheers

Andy

DamagedSpline said...

Hi Andy,

you'll have to install the driver manully.

download http://www.atheros.cz/download/drivers/ar5xxx/xp32-5.3.0.56-whql.zip
, unzip it, run ndiswrapper -i net5211.inf

and your'e done... :)

Andy McMaster said...

Hi again,

Downloaded the file and installed it.

ndiswrapper -l gives:

net5211 : driver installed
device (168C:001C) present (alternate driver: ath_pci)

I still get nothing showing for ifconfig and iwconfig. even after logging out/restarting.

Cheers

Andy

DamagedSpline said...

Andy,

Try to connect manually when the wireless led is on:
left click on NetworkManager->Connect to other Wireless network...

The scan capability of the driver might have been crippled for some unknown reason... I can't think of any other options...

Andy McMaster said...

Hi,

Well, wasn't sure why nothing was coming up in Network config so seeing as I still have Vista on there dual boot (sorry!) I tried it under that to check that the card was working. No problems.

re-booted into Gutsy and Lo! it works. Maybe something had been disable on the card but now the button turns it on and off and even after a power off it seems to be working.

Many thanks for your help. It's been much appreciated!

Not sure how I could have achieved the same effect from the command line in Linux though?

Cheers

Andy

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