--- /dev/null
+ACPI video extensions
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+This driver implement the ACPI Extensions For Display Adapters for
+integrated graphics devices on motherboard, as specified in ACPI 2.0
+Specification, Appendix B, allowing to perform some basic control like
+defining the video POST device, retrieving EDID information or to
+setup a video output, etc. Note that this is an ref. implementation
+only. It may or may not work for your integrated video device.
+
+The ACPI video driver does 3 things regarding backlight control:
+
+1 Export a sysfs interface for user space to control backlight level
+
+If the ACPI table has a video device, and acpi_backlight=vendor kernel
+command line is not present, the driver will register a backlight device
+and set the required backlight operation structure for it for the sysfs
+interface control. For every registered class device, there will be a
+directory named acpi_videoX under /sys/class/backlight.
+
+The backlight sysfs interface has a standard definition here:
+Documentation/ABI/stable/sysfs-class-backlight.
+
+And what ACPI video driver does is:
+actual_brightness: on read, control method _BQC will be evaluated to
+get the brightness level the firmware thinks it is at;
+bl_power: not implemented, will set the current brightness instead;
+brightness: on write, control method _BCM will run to set the requested
+brightness level;
+max_brightness: Derived from the _BCL package(see below);
+type: firmware
+
+Note that ACPI video backlight driver will always use index for
+brightness, actual_brightness and max_brightness. So if we have
+the following _BCL package:
+
+Method (_BCL, 0, NotSerialized)
+{
+ Return (Package (0x0C)
+ {
+ 0x64,
+ 0x32,
+ 0x0A,
+ 0x14,
+ 0x1E,
+ 0x28,
+ 0x32,
+ 0x3C,
+ 0x46,
+ 0x50,
+ 0x5A,
+ 0x64
+ })
+}
+
+The first two levels are for when laptop are on AC or on battery and are
+not used by Linux currently. The remaining 10 levels are supported levels
+that we can choose from. The applicable index values are from 0 (that
+corresponds to the 0x0A brightness value) to 9 (that corresponds to the
+0x64 brightness value) inclusive. Each of those index values is regarded
+as a "brightness level" indicator. Thus from the user space perspective
+the range of available brightness levels is from 0 to 9 (max_brightness)
+inclusive.
+
+2 Notify user space about hotkey event
+
+There are generally two cases for hotkey event reporting:
+i) For some laptops, when user presses the hotkey, a scancode will be
+ generated and sent to user space through the input device created by
+ the keyboard driver as a key type input event, with proper remap, the
+ following key code will appear to user space:
+
+ EV_KEY, KEY_BRIGHTNESSUP
+ EV_KEY, KEY_BRIGHTNESSDOWN
+ etc.
+
+For this case, ACPI video driver does not need to do anything(actually,
+it doesn't even know this happened).
+
+ii) For some laptops, the press of the hotkey will not generate the
+ scancode, instead, firmware will notify the video device ACPI node
+ about the event. The event value is defined in the ACPI spec. ACPI
+ video driver will generate an key type input event according to the
+ notify value it received and send the event to user space through the
+ input device it created:
+
+ event keycode
+ 0x86 KEY_BRIGHTNESSUP
+ 0x87 KEY_BRIGHTNESSDOWN
+ etc.
+
+so this would lead to the same effect as case i) now.
+
+Once user space tool receives this event, it can modify the backlight
+level through the sysfs interface.
+
+3 Change backlight level in the kernel
+
+This works for machines covered by case ii) in Section 2. Once the driver
+received a notification, it will set the backlight level accordingly. This does
+not affect the sending of event to user space, they are always sent to user
+space regardless of whether or not the video module controls the backlight level
+directly. This behaviour can be controlled through the brightness_switch_enabled
+module parameter as documented in kernel-parameters.txt. It is recommended to
+disable this behaviour once a GUI environment starts up and wants to have full
+control of the backlight level.
Code Review / kvmfornfv.git / blobdiff