--- /dev/null
+Sony Notebook Control Driver (SNC) Readme
+-----------------------------------------
+ Copyright (C) 2004- 2005 Stelian Pop <stelian@popies.net>
+ Copyright (C) 2007 Mattia Dongili <malattia@linux.it>
+
+This mini-driver drives the SNC and SPIC device present in the ACPI BIOS of the
+Sony Vaio laptops. This driver mixes both devices functions under the same
+(hopefully consistent) interface. This also means that the sonypi driver is
+obsoleted by sony-laptop now.
+
+Fn keys (hotkeys):
+------------------
+Some models report hotkeys through the SNC or SPIC devices, such events are
+reported both through the ACPI subsystem as acpi events and through the INPUT
+subsystem. See the logs of /proc/bus/input/devices to find out what those
+events are and which input devices are created by the driver.
+Additionally, loading the driver with the debug option will report all events
+in the kernel log.
+
+The "scancodes" passed to the input system (that can be remapped with udev)
+are indexes to the table "sony_laptop_input_keycode_map" in the sony-laptop.c
+module. For example the "FN/E" key combination (EJECTCD on some models)
+generates the scancode 20 (0x14).
+
+Backlight control:
+------------------
+If your laptop model supports it, you will find sysfs files in the
+/sys/class/backlight/sony/
+directory. You will be able to query and set the current screen
+brightness:
+ brightness get/set screen brightness (an integer
+ between 0 and 7)
+ actual_brightness reading from this file will query the HW
+ to get real brightness value
+ max_brightness the maximum brightness value
+
+
+Platform specific:
+------------------
+Loading the sony-laptop module will create a
+/sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/
+directory populated with some files.
+
+You then read/write integer values from/to those files by using
+standard UNIX tools.
+
+The files are:
+ brightness_default screen brightness which will be set
+ when the laptop will be rebooted
+ cdpower power on/off the internal CD drive
+ audiopower power on/off the internal sound card
+ lanpower power on/off the internal ethernet card
+ (only in debug mode)
+ bluetoothpower power on/off the internal bluetooth device
+ fanspeed get/set the fan speed
+
+Note that some files may be missing if they are not supported
+by your particular laptop model.
+
+Example usage:
+ # echo "1" > /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/brightness_default
+sets the lowest screen brightness for the next and later reboots,
+ # echo "8" > /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/brightness_default
+sets the highest screen brightness for the next and later reboots,
+ # cat /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/brightness_default
+retrieves the value.
+
+ # echo "0" > /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/audiopower
+powers off the sound card,
+ # echo "1" > /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/audiopower
+powers on the sound card.
+
+
+RFkill control:
+---------------
+More recent Vaio models expose a consistent set of ACPI methods to
+control radio frequency emitting devices. If you are a lucky owner of
+such a laptop you will find the necessary rfkill devices under
+/sys/class/rfkill. Check those starting with sony-* in
+ # grep . /sys/class/rfkill/*/{state,name}
+
+
+Development:
+------------
+
+If you want to help with the development of this driver (and
+you are not afraid of any side effects doing strange things with
+your ACPI BIOS could have on your laptop), load the driver and
+pass the option 'debug=1'.
+
+REPEAT: DON'T DO THIS IF YOU DON'T LIKE RISKY BUSINESS.
+
+In your kernel logs you will find the list of all ACPI methods
+the SNC device has on your laptop.
+
+* For new models you will see a long list of meaningless method names,
+reading the DSDT table source should reveal that:
+(1) the SNC device uses an internal capability lookup table
+(2) SN00 is used to find values in the lookup table
+(3) SN06 and SN07 are used to call into the real methods based on
+ offsets you can obtain iterating the table using SN00
+(4) SN02 used to enable events.
+Some values in the capability lookup table are more or less known, see
+the code for all sony_call_snc_handle calls, others are more obscure.
+
+* For old models you can see the GCDP/GCDP methods used to pwer on/off
+the CD drive, but there are others and they are usually different from
+model to model.
+
+I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THOSE METHODS DO.
+
+The sony-laptop driver creates, for some of those methods (the most
+current ones found on several Vaio models), an entry under
+/sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop, just like the 'cdpower' one.
+You can create other entries corresponding to your own laptop methods by
+further editing the source (see the 'sony_nc_values' table, and add a new
+entry to this table with your get/set method names using the
+SNC_HANDLE_NAMES macro).
+
+Your mission, should you accept it, is to try finding out what
+those entries are for, by reading/writing random values from/to those
+files and find out what is the impact on your laptop.
+
+Should you find anything interesting, please report it back to me,
+I will not disavow all knowledge of your actions :)
+
+See also http://www.linux.it/~malattia/wiki/index.php/Sony_drivers for other
+useful info.
+
+Bugs/Limitations:
+-----------------
+
+* This driver is not based on official documentation from Sony
+ (because there is none), so there is no guarantee this driver
+ will work at all, or do the right thing. Although this hasn't
+ happened to me, this driver could do very bad things to your
+ laptop, including permanent damage.
+
+* The sony-laptop and sonypi drivers do not interact at all. In the
+ future, sonypi will be removed and replaced by sony-laptop.
+
+* spicctrl, which is the userspace tool used to communicate with the
+ sonypi driver (through /dev/sonypi) is deprecated as well since all
+ its features are now available under the sysfs tree via sony-laptop.
Code Review / kvmfornfv.git / blobdiff