lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2007]   [Jul]   [1]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
Date
From
SubjectRe: blink driver power saving


On Sun, 1 Jul 2007, Andi Kleen wrote:
>
> What is so bad with it? Note it's a debugging facility and used
> for kcrash kernels where the video output doesn't work. But they
> normally only run a few minutes to dump the previous state to disk
> and then reboot.

It has been a total disaster from beginning to end.

It wastes power.

It hangs machines when it tries to blink.

To quote an earlier thread:

"The driver uses panic_blink - something that we expect to work after
panic. It rapidly polls KBC status register to detect when it accepted
led command and does it without taking i8042_lock (because it may have
been taken before kernel panicked) so it is quite possible that that
interferes with atkbd operation."

and it has been confirmed to render unusable at least some thinkpads. I
think it was Pavel who reported it last.

> But then I don't think it hurts anybody. It's main problem
> is that it won't blink for people with USB keyboard.

No, its main problem is that PEOPLE SHOULD NOT USE IT, but it sounds cool,
so people end up configuring the damn thing even though they shouldn't.

Which is why I think it should be marked broken.

And yes, it *does* hurt people.

Linus
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2007-07-02 00:17    [W:0.060 / U:0.032 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site