Lotsa Cabo wrote:
> Man, whomever made the call to make the ACPI changes in FC3 should
> be... well... AAARGH! I've just wasted a considerable amount of time
> on FC3 and... huh? What's that!??! I'm back on FC2! AARGH!
>
> Along with trying to deal with APCI and FC3, I've done a ton of reading
> on the subject. I did find the occasional, "Holy crap... it worked!"
> However, 99.99999% of every other thread, readme, and blog was
> regarding countless problems. And, ironically, none of them had a
> solution (i.e., patch, update, etc.) other than simply disabling ACPI.
To be fair, ACPI is a huge, over-complex specification that is biting
Microsoft as badly. There used to be this comment in the kernel source:
/*
* Check for clue free BIOS implementations who use
* the following QA technique
*
* [ Write BIOS Code ]<------
* | ^
* < Does it Compile >----N--
* |Y ^
* < Does it Boot Win98 >-N--
* |Y
* [Ship It]
*
*/
And this is, unfortunately, way too common. And if you want to move from
Win98 to a system with a different ACPI interpreter, be it Linux,
Win XP, or merely a tweaked 98 interpreter ... you're in trouble.
And Linux needs to handle ACPI better. Unfortunately, the only way
either Microsoft or the Linux community have found to find the
real-world problems with ACPI is to massively test, test, test, against
every combination of hardware that the testers can get their hands on.
So there will be some hardware which gets broken by the changes. Because
the kernel needs to change to get better, and changes will expose bugs
in the ACPI support. (These days, high-end BIOS writers include "Does it
boot Linux 2.4" in their QA technique).
And Fedora, by its "charter" from Red Hat, is supposed to be close to
these changes. This is a two-way street, however: it is worth
bugzilla-ing, because bugzilla notes are at least read by people who can
do something about it once they spot what's wrong.
And if it didn't happen with an FC2 kernel, but does with FC3, then if
you can pinpoint the patch that broke it, you've given them a good hint
to fix it for everyone else. And the bug will then be documented, so it
will be known about next time someone's changing the code.
I should note, however, that FC2 and FC3 are apparently sharing a kernel
tree these days. FC3 bugs are likely to bite you on recent FC2 kernel
updates.
The following quotes came from various kernel maintainers who bear the
scars of heroic struggle against ACPI...
James.
------------------
The fact that it takes more code to parse and interpret ACPI than it
does to route traffic on the internet backbones should be a hint
something is badly wrong either in ACPI the spec, ACPI the
implenentation[sic.] or both.
-- Alan Cox
------------------
"Hardware simply does not work like the manual says and no amount
of Zen contemplation will ever make you at one with a 3c905B
ethernet card."
-- ibid
------------------
> Is there anything else I can contribute?
The latitude and longtitude of the bios writers current position, and
a ballistic missile.
Please boot 2.2.18pre24 (not pre25) on the machine and send me its DMI
strings printed at boot time. I'll add it to the 'stupid morons who cant
program and wouldnt know QA if it hit them on the head with a mallet'
list
- Alan Cox on BIOS bugs
------------------
We could be way simpler if we didn't try to be so flexible.
ACPI - it's too late to improve it - it's the standard
- Andrew Grover (ACPI maintainer)
--
E-mail address: james | You will stop at nothing to reach your objective,
@westexe.demon.co.uk | but only because your brakes are defective.
