ACPI not playing nice...

dreadbrazen · 2008-01-11 23:07:15

I've been trying to get my laptop to a fully functional state under Arch Linux for a good long time now. I currently have everything working except for ACPI and gnome-power-manager integration.

I am running Arch on an IBM X31 laptop using the 2.6.23 Thinkpad+ kernel (from AUR). I have tested everything out in console, and it all appears to be working, with the exception of my backlight on suspend (a common issue).

The problem I am running into is that when I try any of my hotkeys or use any of the GPM utilities, I get the same message:

Action Forbidden: Policy timeout is not valid.  Please wait a few seconds and try again.

I also get the standard "Your computer failed to suspend" message.

I have tried everything. I have followed all the guides available in our wiki, on our forums, on other distro wikis and forums, etc., etc. I have hand-written ACPI events and handlers. I have scoured the (now outdated) Thinkwiki. Nothing seems to work. What's really frustrating is that everything worked out of the box on Ubuntu, which I definitely do not want to revisit.

Has anyone had any luck with ACPI on their IBM laptop?

ANY help here would be greatly appreciated. I am floundering here.

dreadbrazen · 2008-01-12 18:17:44

So... nearly 40 views with no reply.

I've done some more work, creating a customized handler.sh and playing with some other options. I get the same error messages. Here's my handler.sh:

case "$1" in
    ibm/hotkey)
        case "$2" in
            0000100c)                ##Hibernate
                hibernate
            ;;
            00001004)                ##Sleep
                FGCONSOLE=`fgconsole`
                chvt 1
                radeontool light off
                pm-suspend
                radeontool light on
                chvt $FGCONSOLE
            ;;
            00001007)
                /usr/bin/xrandr --output VGA-0 --auto
            ;;
            *) logger "ACPI action undefined: $4" ;;
        esac
        ;;

    button/lid)
        case "$2" in
            FGCONSOLE=`fgconsole`
            chvt 1
            radeontool light off
            pm-suspend
            radeontool light on
            chvt $FGCONSOLE
            ;;
        *)
            logger "ACPI group/action undefined: $1 / $2"
        esac
        ;;
esac

and here's the log:

[drew@aedismobile ~]$ sudo tail /var/log/acpid.log
Jan 12 13:06:49 aedismobile acpid: 4 rules loaded
Jan 12 13:06:50 aedismobile acpid: client connected from 7341[0:0]
Jan 12 13:06:50 aedismobile acpid: 1 client rule loaded
Jan 12 13:06:51 aedismobile acpid: received event "ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 00001004"
Jan 12 13:06:51 aedismobile acpid: notifying client 7341[0:0]
Jan 12 13:06:51 aedismobile acpid: executing action "/etc/acpi/handler.sh ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 00001004"
Jan 12 13:06:52 aedismobile acpid: action exited with status 126
Jan 12 13:06:52 aedismobile acpid: completed event "ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 00001004"
Jan 12 13:06:54 aedismobile acpid: client connected from 7225[82:82]
Jan 12 13:06:54 aedismobile acpid: 1 client rule loaded

Running gnome-power-manager with "gnome-power-manager --verbose --no-daemon" produces nothing of use.

There are still a couple of things that I'm going to try, but any insight would be greatly appreciated.

dreadbrazen · 2008-01-13 18:01:03

At kilecho7's suggestion, I added to my grub kernel line. This did not seem to do anything.

Before I added this line, however, my computer started doing some strange things. As soon as I boot, the computer will suspend. When I resume from this, the moon light continues blinking. If I suspend via console, the computer goes into a suspend loop, not letting me back to my desktop. Furthermore, when I attempt to reboot or shutdown, the computer goes into the same loop, and I must continually suspend/resume 4 times in order to fully shutdown. Weird stuff. Also, just recently when I resume (after the initial suspend on boot), the screen is filled with garbage.

I think my best bet is to try something else altogether. While I love Arch, and will still run it on my desktop, I think it's time to try another version of linux on my laptop. I'm currently looking at Slackware and Frugal. Any suggestions will of course be considered. Thank you kilecho7 for your help. I just don't think that Arch was meant to run on this laptop...

zyghom · 2008-01-13 19:00:56

dreadbrazen wrote:

I just don't think that Arch was meant to run on this laptop...

rather vice versa: laptops are not ment to run anything but MS
and this is why we suffer
I'm runnig linux on laptops starting from 2003 - year by year it is better
but ... choice is the power of linux I believe

dreadbrazen · 2008-01-18 07:17:43

Decided to stick with Arch after a full reinstall. Instead of trying to deal with the ACPI issues, I have decided to work with APM instead. Quick note for you Thinkpad owners out there:

APM works well. So if your ACPI simply will not work (even with a bios upgrade), then give APM a shot. The hibernation is a serious pain to get working, but everything else (including screen switching) works like a charm out of the box.

Now if there was only a way to get frequency scaling working...

Arch Linux

#1 2008-01-11 23:07:15

ACPI not playing nice...

#2 2008-01-12 18:17:44

Re: ACPI not playing nice...

#3 2008-01-13 18:01:03

Re: ACPI not playing nice...

#4 2008-01-13 19:00:56

Re: ACPI not playing nice...

#5 2008-01-18 07:17:43

Re: ACPI not playing nice...

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