Archive for the 'Hacks' Category

Two fixes in this release, let’s start with the more important one :)

The DBus configuration file shipped with pommed now explicitly allows method calls to org.pommed, which is needed with the newer versions of DBus where the default configuration on the system bus has been made more strict to close a security hole. If the pommed clients stopped working for you after a DBus update, replace /etc/dbus-1/system.d/pommed.conf by the dbus-policy.conf file shipped with pommed.

Second fix is related to the Apple wireless (Bluetooth) keyboard, which previous versions of pommed would recognize just fine but reject because it exposes a type of events usually indicative of a mouse (and pommed doesn’t listen to mouse devices). This is now fixed for this particular keyboard, so pommed will react to the hotkeys on this keyboard too.

For the complete list of changes, see the ChangeLog file in the source distribution. Comments at the usual address :)

pommed v1.23 is out, with full support for the late 2008 laptops.

The LCD backlight inner workings got figured out finally, but there’s a catch: the backlight won’t react to the settings when running X11 with the proprietary nVidia drivers on the MacBook5,1 and the MacBookAir2,1. It works fine on the MacBookPro5,1 and it works fine on all three machines with the opensource nouveau driver. Switching to the console before setting the backlight and then back to X does work as a workaround.

So there’s something up with the proprietary nVidia driver, and my uneducated guess is that the MacBook Pro may somehow be exempt from the issue due to its dual GPU config.

I’ve also switched the nVidia machines to using the generic sysfs backlight driver in pommed. This driver has been there for some time for the PowerPC machines, so now it’s part of the generic pommed code. You need the mbp_nvidia_bl driver in your kernel for this to work.

Don’t panic! If you don’t have it, pommed will fall back to the native driver (nv8600mgt) and everything will work just as before. Pommed will tell you if it has to fall back to the native driver, so check your logs if you want to know.

This release of pommed needs testing on all nVidia machines: MacBookPro3,1, MacBookPro4,1, MacBookPro5,1, MacBook5,1 and MacBookAir2,1. If anything doesn’t work, tell me about it and I’ll fix it.

Lazyweb-type post ahead :)

I am looking for the UGA (Universal Graphics Adapter) specification. It is part of EFI 1.10, but was developed by Microsoft, so it’s not documented in the Intel spec.

Instead, the Intel spec contains a Microsoft URL where the spec used to be available, but that URL doesn’t exist anymore and I can’t find the spec anywhere.

So, if anybody out there has a copy of that spec, I’d very much like to get it.

I am looking for the UGA IO Protocol spec, which may very well be the key to solving an annoying framebuffer issue I’m working on.

Thanks!

pommed v1.20 is out, with two minor fixes:

• a segfault that could not trigger on any normal setup;
• use of the correct bus type to detect the Apple wireless keyboards.

Available on Alioth now, in unstable after the next mirror push.

Also I have to block pommed >= 1.19 from entering testing because Linux 2.6.25 is not yet available in Lenny. I hope this will be fixed soon, in the meanwhile, grab the packages from unstable if you’re running testing with a 2.6.25 kernel.

I’ve just released pommed v1.18, which is mainly a maintenance release.

I’ve added some more USB IDs for Apple external keyboards and relaxed the event devices identification for internal keyboards.

pommed will now happily start on a machine fitted with a keyboard+trackpad assembly that normally isn’t found on this model. This can happen when the topcase of the machine is replaced with the wrong part. I expect this situation will happen more and more often as people buy parts from EBay or similar to repair their laptops.