[ltp] Re: Bug#565789: say what the current Thinkpad BIOS/Firmware should be

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Wed, 20 Jan 2010, jidanni@jidanni.org wrote:
> >>>>> "H" == Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@debian.org> writes:
> 
> H> The version the driver thinks you should use is the latest that was
> H> available when I wasted a few hours tracking them all.
> 
> Yes, but in addition to giving the message
> "Your version 1234 is out of date".
> 
> You need to say "we believe the current version is 1236".

No, I don't.  You will either update or you will not update when you see
that message.

If you are going to try to update, you will need to download the firmware,
and the web page where you can download it will give you the latest
firmware.

So, any version information is pointless, and it would look like I recommend
a certain version instead of whatever is the latest.

> And you need to say "this is based on information from
> http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/BIOS_Upgrade ".

No, because it is not.  When I decide a BIOS type needs to be added to that
table, I track down the lenovo page for that model and get the information
from there.  Whether a BIOS type will be added depends on it being stable
(no updates for a long time), what the changelog says it fixes, and whether
it fixes some problem I got a report for.  It is not automatic.

I also happen to take the opportunity to update thinkwiki, since I consider
thinkwiki to be a really important resource, but that's orthogonal to the
issue.  And the canonical location IS the lenovo/IBM site.

> Or else each user
> 1. Will spend even more hours than the ones you mentioned, trying to track
> down what you are warning him about. He will end up all over the

You're the first one I know of that had so much trouble to locate it.  I
guess most people just ask in the thinkpad or lenovo forums (which I don't
monitor).  Some ask how to upgrade the bios in one of the two thinkpad MLs,
and get told to look in thinkwiki.  And some won't have much trouble
locating it through the Lenovo site.

> 2. He will be unable to write down on paper "don't worry about 1236. It's

The "public changelog" is NOT complete, and I have received that information
from official sources.

> 3. Perhaps consider allowing the user to put the BIOS etc. numbers he is
> happy with in some file that could be checked, so he could say "don't
> warn me about anything up thru 1238 (even though he really has only 1236
> installed.)

Well, you could just tell whatever tool you use to check the system logs to
ignore it.  It is logged only once per boot for most users (which don't
rmmod/modprobe thinkpad-acpi once the system is running).

Now, if it is causing a massive ruckus because of some widespread tool that
looks in the kernel log for LOG_WARNING and scares the heck out of the users
with warning sirens, that's a different deal.  In that case I could be
persuaded to lower the severity from LOG_WARN to LOG_NOTICE as a stopgap
measure.

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh