Fwd: ACPI support in LinuxBIOS - moderator approval (fwd)

[Stefan Reinauer]

* jarcher at pobox.com <jarcher at pobox.com> [031126 16:32]:
> I'll raise the question to the next level....
> 
> Has there been any discussion of putting any power management support into 
> the LinuxBIOS.  I've got a possible need for some basics, like suspend to 
> RAM.  Classic APM might be enough and simple to implement.  ACPI would be a 
> good choice, but I'm not sure about how much ROM foot print would be needed.

Since ACPI is, similar to FCode, an interface based on abstracted binary
code, it would probably be easier to add ACPI support to LinuxBIOS than
supporting APM which needs code hooks.

The ACPI tables could be a) generated by or b) stored in LinuxBIOS as is
and will be found and interpreted by the Linux Kernel. But besides the
technical issues there's also a legal question when including ACPI tables
(some are patented by MS and not freely usable iirc, others might be
copyrighted by Awkward & Co.)
There are also kernel patches for Linux that allow attaching some of the
ACPI tables to an initial ramdisk. This can be used to override broken
bios ACPI tables with corrected ones without reflashing the bios.

Stefan

  
-- 
     Stefan Reinauer, SUSE LINUX AG
Teamleader Architecture Development