Bug 14597

Summary: thinkpad-acpi: driver fails to load on old BIOS for the A31, T23-T30, X30-X31
Product: Drivers Reporter: Henrique de Moraes Holschuh (hmh)
Component: PlatformAssignee: Henrique de Moraes Holschuh (hmh)
Status: CLOSED CODE_FIX    
Severity: high CC: akpm, lenb, rjw
Priority: P1    
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Kernel Version: 2.6.32-rc Subsystem:
Regression: Yes Bisected commit-id:
Bug Depends on:    
Bug Blocks: 14230    
Attachments: Fix the detection of T23 and other thinkpads

Description Henrique de Moraes Holschuh 2009-11-13 20:45:11 UTC
The driver will fail to detect BIOSes that both lack the "ThinkPad" string in the DMI tables, and the EC version string, for ThinkPads that have the EC version string on the most up-to-date BIOSES.

This causes the driver to return -ENODEV, and the module will not load.

The problem can be worked around by giving the module the "force_load=1" parameter.

Problem tracked down to the quirk tables used as a fallback for known-BIOS detection, they would not match if the EC version is flagged as "unknown".
Comment 1 Henrique de Moraes Holschuh 2009-11-13 20:47:41 UTC
Created attachment 23770 [details]
Fix the detection of T23 and other thinkpads

Fix the quirk tables to also match on BIOSes that miss the EC fw string.
Comment 2 Henrique de Moraes Holschuh 2009-11-13 20:49:31 UTC
Waiting a day for possible confirmation from bug reporter that the patch works...
Comment 3 Andrew Morton 2009-11-13 21:35:17 UTC
From which earlier kernel version is this a regression?
Comment 4 Paul Kimoto 2009-11-13 22:27:43 UTC
This problem did not appear in the 2.6.31 series (I am quite certain about 2.6.31.6), and hmh's patch fixes it for me.  (I am the initial bug reporter.)
Comment 5 Andrew Morton 2009-11-13 22:55:22 UTC
Cool.

Henrique, please cc me on the formal patch email?
Comment 6 Rafael J. Wysocki 2009-11-14 00:12:16 UTC
Handled-By : Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@hmh.eng.br>
Patch : http://bugzilla.kernel.org/attachment.cgi?id=23770
Comment 7 Henrique de Moraes Holschuh 2009-11-14 02:16:19 UTC
(In reply to comment #5)
> Henrique, please cc me on the formal patch email?

Will do.  I am adding the tested-by and cc lines now, and will ship it to Len Brown in a few minutes.   If you'd rather send it to Linus yourself, feel free to do so :)
Comment 8 Len Brown 2009-11-25 05:43:38 UTC
applied to acpi tree for 2.6.32
Comment 9 Len Brown 2009-12-09 19:39:00 UTC
275014ae46871ce0ab08550fc4040f12b685813a
thinkpad-acpi: fix detection of old ThinkPads

shipped in linux 2.6.32

closed
Comment 10 Andrew Morton 2009-12-09 20:03:31 UTC
But it wasn't tagged stable@kernel.org, so it won't be fixed in 2.6.31.x?
Comment 11 Henrique de Moraes Holschuh 2009-12-09 20:18:54 UTC
2.6.31 doesn't have the bug, AFAIK.