[ltp] re: ibm-acpi-0.11

[Colin Macdonald]

Hi,

I tested ibm-acpi-0.11 with my A21e.  The three new features all
work to varying degrees:

screen brightness:  works perfect

fan: works fine except the fan speed is always report as 0
(Boris: we discussed this before, recall that I could not locate
any fan speed info in ecdump).

I might suggest a name change to autofanctrl or something like
that as disabling or enabling /proc/acpi/ibm/fan doesn't quite do
what most users might think at first.

volume:
works, with the following pecularities:
The max when using the keys seems to be 14 but using the ibm-acpi
interface I can increase it to 15 but it doesn't sound any louder
than 14 to my ears (does this remind anyone else of the scene in
Spinal Tap when they turn their amps up to "11"? ;-)
The "echo level x > volume" interface doesn't function as I'd
expect; it approaches x monotonically but takes several commands
to get there.  Example:

belladonna ibm # cat volume
level:          14
mute:           off
commands:       up, down, mute
commands:       level <level> (<level> is 0-15)
belladonna ibm # echo level 1 > volume; cat volume
level:          8
mute:           off
commands:       up, down, mute
commands:       level <level> (<level> is 0-15)
belladonna ibm # echo level 1 > volume; cat volume
level:          1
mute:           off
commands:       up, down, mute
commands:       level <level> (<level> is 0-15)
belladonna ibm # echo level 1 > volume; cat volume
level:          1
mute:           off
commands:       up, down, mute
commands:       level <level> (<level> is 0-15)
belladonna ibm #
belladonna ibm # echo level 15 > volume; cat volume
level:          3
mute:           off
commands:       up, down, mute
commands:       level <level> (<level> is 0-15)
belladonna ibm # echo level 15 > volume; cat volume
level:          6
mute:           off
commands:       up, down, mute
commands:       level <level> (<level> is 0-15)
belladonna ibm # echo level 15 > volume; cat volume
level:          14
mute:           off
commands:       up, down, mute
commands:       level <level> (<level> is 0-15)
belladonna ibm # echo level 15 > volume; cat volume
level:          15
mute:           off
commands:       up, down, mute
commands:       level <level> (<level> is 0-15)

Its not the same stepsize each time either:
belladonna ibm # cat volume
level:          1
mute:           off
commands:       up, down, mute
commands:       level <level> (<level> is 0-15)
belladonna ibm # echo level 15 > volume; cat volume
level:          2
mute:           off
commands:       up, down, mute
commands:       level <level> (<level> is 0-15)
belladonna ibm # echo level 15 > volume; cat volume
level:          11
mute:           off
commands:       up, down, mute
commands:       level <level> (<level> is 0-15)
belladonna ibm # echo level 15 > volume; cat volume
level:          14
mute:           off
commands:       up, down, mute
commands:       level <level> (<level> is 0-15)
belladonna ibm # echo level 15 > volume; cat volume
level:          15
mute:           off
commands:       up, down, mute
commands:       level <level> (<level> is 0-15)
belladonna ibm #

The "echo [up|down] > volume" seems to work correctly in stepsizes
of 1.  "echo mute > volume" also works correctly.

Thanks again for this great software!

Cheers,
Colin

--
Colin Macdonald
Graduate Student, Dept. of Mathematics, Simon Fraser University
mail: cbm[at]sfu[dot]ca, phone: 604.268.6689 (office)

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