Revision 1 as of 2010-12-14 16:23:14

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ACPI Tricks and Tips

The ACPI driver

The ACPI specification is large and unwieldy hence the Linux ACPI driver is a very large and complex software component. There are many varieties of ACPI tables, but they break into two main categories - configuration data and ACPI Machine Language (AML) byte code. The driver is responsible for locating and extracting data from the ACPI tables and interpreting it in a way that conforms to the specification. The driver must also in many cases work the same way that Windows interprets the specification. The driver contains workarounds to firmware, Embedded Controller and Southbridge bugs; clearly this adds to the complexity of the code.

The driver doesn't just use configuration data in the ACPI tables - it also has to be able to interpret the ACPI AML byte code, which also adds to the complexity. The driver also contains an OS abstraction layer that maps to the Linux kernel way of accessing memory and I/O regions, which also adds another layer of indirection. All in all ACPI is a heavily overly engineered solution, however it is powerful because it provides an abstract view of how to control machine specific hardware to any operating system. The downside to ACPI is that it requires a driver to be able to correctly implement the ACPI specification and also work around non-conforming machines. The major downside is that most firmware vendors engineer ACPI to match with a very Microsoft centric implementation of ACPI which at times is a little lax in some areas and does not fully conform to the ACPI specification.

ACPI bugs

Bugs fall into several areas:

ACPI AML code bugs

The AML code allows firmware vendors to interface with the underlying hardware (e.g. Southbridge, Embedded Controller, I/O ports, etc) in a machine specific way but be able to present to the host operating system a standardised interface which has been carefully abstracted and defined fairly clearly in the ACPI spec. For example, to be able to query the current backlight brightness level, the vendor writes an AML method called _BQC (Backlight Query Current) which returns the level. The method could be implemented in many different wauys, for example, just reading a value from the Embedded Controller's memory, or maybe it jumps into the BIOS to fetch information using a System Management Mode service. As it is, the kernel has no idea of how the method is implemented - it just exectutes the AML byte code which has full access to I/O regions and memory to allow it to interact with the hardware.

Unfortunately the AML code is normally hand crafted code and being software can have bugs, here are just a few:

  • Timing issues - e.g. interacting with the Embedded Controller, mis-timed read/writes. AML may execute correctly in Windows but not in Linux because of the different speed AML operations are being executed in different host operating systems.
  • Race conditions - e.g. poor locking on regions that need atomic locking
  • Mishandling of time-outs - e.g. not checking mutex lock tim-eout errors
  • Busy loops - e.g. busy loops checking Embedded Controller port status changes, and looping forever in a tight loop.
  • Methods returning incorrect values, or wrong data types
  • Methods having multiple return paths where some return values, others don't.
  • Semantic bugs - methods expected to behave according to the specification but don't.
  • Syntactic bugs - AML compiles correctly on the Microsoft AML compiler but won't with the stricter Intel iasl compiler.
  • Access of data outside predefined I/O or memory regions. Indexes into regions fall outside and leave undefined behaviour.
  • Recursion - methods that recurse deeper than 255 levels are broken and stopped from overflowing the stack.
  • Missing methods - e.g. brightness controls missing, or misspelt (such as _BQC spelled as _BCQ).

In fact the list is endless since it's just like an program code.

The AML code is found in two types of tables; the DSDT and the SSDT. There should be only one DSDT but there can be one or more SSDTs. To view the code requires the following steps: Extract the tables from ROM and disassemble the AML byte code into AML assembler:

sudo acpidump > acpidata.dat
acpixtract -sSSDT acpidata.dat
acpixtract -sDSDT acpidata.dat
iasl -d DSDT.dat SSDT*.dat

..and then look at the .dsl files that contain the AML assembler.

Mis-configured Tables

Tables contain data that defines how a system is configured and behaves. ACPI is very feature rich (probably too feature rich) and defines many aspects of system configuration. For example, CPU frequency levels can be defined in the ACPI tables, and it has been known for the maximum frequency level on some Atom netbooks to be omitted from the _PSS (Performance Supported States) object and hence the user cannot run their machine at the maximum frequency. The _PSS object is in fact in the DSDT as AML code, so one needs to extract the table and disassemble this.

However, some tables are just pure configuration data structures, such as the FACP. To look at the individual fields one needs to extract the table and disassemble it. One can use:

sudo acpidump > acpidata.dat
acpixtract -sFACP acpidata.dat
iasl -d FACP.dat 

..and then look at the FACP.dsl file and check each field against the ACPI specification which can be found at http://www.acpi.info/spec.htm

The development version of the firmware test suite (for 11.04) will contain the ability to dump and annotate the ACPI tables as follows:

sudo fwts acpidump -

which is a little easier.

Corrupt Tables

Bit rot can happen. It is rare. However, each ACPI table has a checksum based on 8 bit summation of the contents of the table. To sanity check this, use the latest development version of the firmware test suite and run a checksum sanity check on the tables using:

sudo fwts checksum -

Note that some machines out in the field have correct table contents and erroneous checksums!

Interaction with BIOS

This is where things are just plain evil. ACPI AML byte code can trigger Service Management Interrupts by writing a magic number to a magic port. This then triggers a non-maskable interrupt out of kernel context straight into the BIOS context. The BIOS can then do anything it wants in a SMI, and return back to the kernel context at some arbitrary point in the future. The BIOS is at liberty to twiddle with any I/O ports or memory region and it also messes up the CPU cache during the SMI. So expect weird issues when SMIs are being used.

Incidentally, the FACP contains information concerning the SMI - the word at 0x2e contains the SCI interrupt number (which should show up as the acpi interrupt in /proc/interrupts) and the 4 byte integer at offset 0x30 in the FACP contains the SMI command port address. One writes a magic value to this command port to generate an SMI.

Interaction with the Embedded Controller

This is where really difficult to diagnose issues occur. The Embedded Controller (EC) contains proprietary code to control peripherals. For example, the EC may be directly connected to the sleep button, so that when a user presses the sleep key, the EC is interrupted and it then pokes the southbridge which generates an General Purpose Event (GPE) which the ACPI driver handles. Then the ACPI driver checks attempts to execute a AML method to handle this GPE event. The naming convention is as follows:

_Lxx for level triggered GPE, _Exx for edge triggered GPE.

the xx maps on the hexadecimal number of the GPE, e.g. level triggered GPE 0x1e will require a Method called _L1E in the DSDT to handle this event.

Another way the EC is interacted with is by reading/writing to the EC memory. This memory is mapped into the kernel's address space using AML OperationRegion() definitions, for example on an Lenovo 3000N200, this is declared as follows

        OperationRegion (ERAM, EmbeddedControl, Zero, 0xFF)
        Field (ERAM, ByteAcc, Lock, Preserve)
                    Offset (0x60), // offset 0x60 from start of ERAM
            SMPR,   8,
            SMST,   8,
            SMAD,   8,
            GAU1,   8,
            CYC1,   8,
            BPC1,   16,
            BAC1,   16,
            BAT1,   8,
            BTW1,   16

Note how a symbolic name is mapped onto 8 or 16 bit fields in the embedded controllers RAM. Methods can then refer to the symbols to read/write to the EC RAM in a straight forward load/store instruction. However, the ACPI driver knows that these regions are EmbeddedControl addresses and maps the load/stores into data read/write commands that are issued over the EC command and data ports.

The EC command port location can be found by using:

cat /proc/acpi/embedded_controller/*/info
gpe:                    0x1c
ports:                  0x66, 0x62
use global lock:        no

The convention is that the command port/status port is listed first (0x66) then the data port (0x62). The EC signals to the kernel via the acpi interrupt and generates GPE 0x1c. The global lock flag indicator if the EC uses a global lock to protect it when doing read/write transactions. The driver for the EC is found in drivers/acpi/ec.c

Generally, most Embedded Controllers share common features in their memory locations, with minor vendor specific changes from machine to machine. Hence most Lenovos share the same basic functionality mappings onto the EC memory, which enables one to figure out which memory location may be used for specific features. Since these fields are proprietary there is scant documentation and a lot of the debugging at this level is down to intelligent guesswork and reverse engineering the AML methods to figure out what how the EC works.

Section if the version 4.0 of the ACPI specification "Queuing the Matching Control Method for Execution" explains another aspect of EC and ACPI interaction - the _Qxx embedded controller event methods.

General-purpose events can be raised from a GPE bit tied to an embedded controller. When these occur, the event is handled by acpi_ec_gpe_handler() which ultimately calls acpi_ec_sync_query() - this queries the EC for an 8 bit event code (via acpi_ec_query_unlocked()). The 8 bit event code indicates which _Qxx method to be called (xx is the hexadecimal number of the query). Note that query event code 0x00 is reserved - it indicates that there are no outstanding events.

The following examples of _Qxx events handle event codes 0xba and 0xbb for LID close and LID open events. Note how they store lid state and then generate a LID notification.

                    Method (_QBA, 0, NotSerialized)
                        Store (Zero, ^^^^LID0.LIDS)
                        Notify (LID0, 0x80)

                    Method (_QBB, 0, NotSerialized)
                        Store (One, ^^^^LID0.LIDS)
                        Notify (LID0, 0x80)

To debug this, build a kernel with dynamic debug enabled "CONFIG_DYNAMIC_DEBUG=y" and boot. Then as root, enable debug as follows:

echo -n 'file ec.c +p' | sudo tee /sys/kernel/debug/dynamic_debug/control

and messages appear in the kernel log. The following messages are of interest:

  • "~~~> interrupt" - an EC GPE has occurred.

  • "push query execution (0xXX) on queue" - XX is the hexadecimal EC event code.
  • "push gpe query to the queue" - shows a EC SCI has occurred and a EC query is being pushed
  • "---> status = 0xXX" - EC read status, XX is the hex status value

  • "---> data = 0xXX" - EC read of data, XX is the hex data value

  • "<--- command = 0xXX", EC command, XX is the hex command

  • "<--- data = 0xXX", EC data write, XX is the hex data value

How to Debug

If you have got this far and not feeling completely put off then well done! The next step to figuring out bugs in the ACPI domain is to be able to effectively tweak the ACPI driver debug code to get the required information out of the driver at run time.

The first step is to enable the ACPI debug code. This is a compile time kernel option. Enable CONFIG_ACPI_DEBUG and build a debug kernel.

Next, install the kernel and increase the internal kernel printk() circular buffer to ~8-16M as one can generate a lot of debug messages with the ACPI debug enabled. Use the kernel parameter:


Note that the size must be in multiples of 2 to work correctly.

Next we need to select the appropriate debug bit masks. These come in two forms - the debug_layer which controls which component of the ACPI driver can generate debug and then the debug_level which debugs various types of messages (e.g. initialisation, method execution, info messages etc).

You can either set these at boot type using kernel parameters, e.g.:

debug_layer=0x8400082 debug_level=0x31000200

or at run time by echoing the hexadecimal values into the /sys/module/acpi/parameters files as root:

echo 0x8400082 > /sys/module/acpi/parameters/debug_layer
echo 0x31000200 > /sys/module/acpi/parameters/debug_level

Below is a program to calculate the bit masks to enable specific debug features:

#include <stdio.h>

#define ACPI_UTILITIES                  0x00000001
#define ACPI_HARDWARE                   0x00000002
#define ACPI_EVENTS                     0x00000004
#define ACPI_TABLES                     0x00000008
#define ACPI_NAMESPACE                  0x00000010
#define ACPI_PARSER                     0x00000020
#define ACPI_DISPATCHER                 0x00000040
#define ACPI_EXECUTER                   0x00000080
#define ACPI_RESOURCES                  0x00000100
#define ACPI_CA_DEBUGGER                0x00000200
#define ACPI_OS_SERVICES                0x00000400
#define ACPI_CA_DISASSEMBLER            0x00000800
#define ACPI_COMPILER                   0x00001000
#define ACPI_TOOLS                      0x00002000
#define ACPI_BUS_COMPONENT              0x00010000
#define ACPI_AC_COMPONENT               0x00020000
#define ACPI_BATTERY_COMPONENT          0x00040000
#define ACPI_BUTTON_COMPONENT           0x00080000
#define ACPI_SBS_COMPONENT              0x00100000
#define ACPI_FAN_COMPONENT              0x00200000
#define ACPI_PCI_COMPONENT              0x00400000
#define ACPI_POWER_COMPONENT            0x00800000
#define ACPI_CONTAINER_COMPONENT        0x01000000
#define ACPI_SYSTEM_COMPONENT           0x02000000
#define ACPI_THERMAL_COMPONENT          0x04000000
#define ACPI_MEMORY_DEVICE_COMPONENT    0x08000000
#define ACPI_VIDEO_COMPONENT            0x10000000
#define ACPI_PROCESSOR_COMPONENT        0x20000000

#define ACPI_LV_INIT                    0x00000001
#define ACPI_LV_DEBUG_OBJECT            0x00000002
#define ACPI_LV_INFO                    0x00000004
#define ACPI_LV_INIT_NAMES              0x00000020
#define ACPI_LV_PARSE                   0x00000040
#define ACPI_LV_LOAD                    0x00000080
#define ACPI_LV_DISPATCH                0x00000100
#define ACPI_LV_EXEC                    0x00000200
#define ACPI_LV_NAMES                   0x00000400
#define ACPI_LV_OPREGION                0x00000800
#define ACPI_LV_BFIELD                  0x00001000
#define ACPI_LV_TABLES                  0x00002000
#define ACPI_LV_VALUES                  0x00004000
#define ACPI_LV_OBJECTS                 0x00008000
#define ACPI_LV_RESOURCES               0x00010000
#define ACPI_LV_USER_REQUESTS           0x00020000
#define ACPI_LV_PACKAGE                 0x00040000
#define ACPI_LV_ALLOCATIONS             0x00100000
#define ACPI_LV_FUNCTIONS               0x00200000
#define ACPI_LV_OPTIMIZATIONS           0x00400000
#define ACPI_LV_MUTEX                   0x01000000
#define ACPI_LV_THREADS                 0x02000000
#define ACPI_LV_IO                      0x04000000
#define ACPI_LV_INTERRUPTS              0x08000000
#define ACPI_LV_AML_DISASSEMBLE         0x10000000
#define ACPI_LV_VERBOSE_INFO            0x20000000
#define ACPI_LV_FULL_TABLES             0x40000000
#define ACPI_LV_EVENTS                  0x80000000

int main(int argc, char **argv)
        unsigned long debug_layer = 
                ACPI_HARDWARE |
                ACPI_EXECUTER |
                ACPI_PCI_COMPONENT |
        unsigned long debug_level = 
                ACPI_LV_EXEC |
                ACPI_LV_MUTEX |
                ACPI_LV_AML_DISASSEMBLE |

        printf("echo 0x%lx > /sys/module/acpi/parameters/debug_layer\n", debug_layer);
        printf("echo 0x%lx > /sys/module/acpi/parameters/debug_level\n", debug_level);

in the example above, I wanted to debug the ACPI AML code being executed and I wanted to observe possible race conditions around the EC hence I wanted to look at the way mutexes were being used, so I enabled ACPI_LV_EXEC, ACPI_LV_MUTEX, ACPI_LV_AML_DISASSEMBLE, ACPI_LV_VERBOSE_INFO. I wanted to trace inside the driver's hardware component to observe read/writes to the EC memory space, and I wanted to debug all PCI and memory operations as well as see how the AML executer was functioning.

As you can see, there is a lot of fine control. Be prepared to see lots of output and be patient - one needs to look at how the AML bytecode is being executed and compare that to the AML inside the DSDT and SSDTs. Needless to say, it is a very time consuming exercise. There is plenty of good documentation available in the Linux kernel, in document: Documentation/acpi/debug.txt

Sanity Checking ACPI Tables

Fortunately we have tools to sanity check the ACPI tables.


This is the firmware test suite, designed to interrogate and look at BIOS + ACPI firmware bugs. Several tests are available in the latest development version:

  • Get general ACPI information (shallow test)

sudo fwts acpiinfo -

  • Check for one instance of APIC defined in the tables:

sudo fwts apicinstance -

  • Checksum the ACPI tables

sudo fwts checksum -

  • FADT SCI_EN enabled check.

sudo fwts fadt -

  • MCFG PCI Express* memory mapped config space.

sudo fwts mcfg -

  • Re-assemble the DSDT and find syntax errors, warnings and some semantic check of AML code.

sudo fwts syntaxcheck -

  • Dump and annoate ACPI tables.

sudo fwts acpidump -

  • Test suspend/resume

sudo fwts s3 -

  • Test hibernate/resume

sudo fwts s4 -

  • Interactive tests, hotkeys, lid, battery, etc..

sudo fwts --interactive


As yet, this tool is not packaged up in debian or Ubuntu, so one needs to build this oneself. This tool allows one to load in the ACPI tables into an emulator and then interogate and probe the methods interactivelt. The downside is that it cannot emulate ACPI/BIOS and ACPI/EC interactions.



sudo acpidump > acpi.info && acpixtract -a acpi.info


./acpiexec -v *.dat





on a Lenovo 3000N200 laptop the battery information method is labelled \_SB_.PCI0.LPCB.BAT1._BIF, so to execute this method one uses:

execute \_SB_.PCI0.LPCB.BAT1._BIF
Executing \_SB_.PCI0.LPCB.BAT1._BIF
  [Package] Contains 13 Elements:
    [Integer] = 0000000000000001
    [Integer] = 0000000000000FA0
    [Integer] = 0000000000000FA0
    [Integer] = 0000000000000001
    [Integer] = 0000000000002B5C
    [Integer] = 00000000000001A4
    [Integer] = 000000000000009C
    [Integer] = 0000000000000108
    [Integer] = 0000000000000EC4
    [String] Length 08 = PA3465U
    [String] Length 05 = 3658Q
    [String] Length 06 = Li-Ion
    [String] Length 07 = COMPAL

To single stepped through the code use the debug command on the method as follows:

debug \_SB_.PCI0.LPCB.BAT1._BIF




Serialized Code



If acpi_serialize fixes an issue then one should identify which Methods need to be declared as NotSerialized and then recommend a BIOS fix to the vendor.