| Summary: | The X server warning message when /dev/apm_bios can't be opened is misleading | ||||||||||
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| Product: | xorg | Reporter: | Mike A. Harris <mharris> | ||||||||
| Component: | Server/General | Assignee: | Xorg Project Team <xorg-team> | ||||||||
| Status: | RESOLVED FIXED | QA Contact: | |||||||||
| Severity: | normal | ||||||||||
| Priority: | high | CC: | ajax | ||||||||
| Version: | unspecified | ||||||||||
| Hardware: | All | ||||||||||
| OS: | Linux (All) | ||||||||||
| Whiteboard: | |||||||||||
| i915 platform: | i915 features: | ||||||||||
| Bug Depends on: | |||||||||||
| Bug Blocks: | 3116 | ||||||||||
| Attachments: |
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I'd like to have some opinions about this, and then unless there is disagreement, I will make a patch unless someone beats me to it. Also, feel free to suggest alternate wordings for the log message if desired. users can and do think this. between ACPI and DPMS, APM's userbase is shrinking every day. downgrading this to X_INFO isn't going to hurt anyone. Created attachment 2430 [details] [review] kinder-gentler-apm-message-1.patch more pleasant message Created attachment 2431 [details] [review] kinder-gentler-apm-message-2.patch post-bikeshed version of the same message applied to HEAD, closing. reopening, didn't change the right xf86MsgVerb call... Created attachment 2532 [details] [review] kinder-gentler-apm-message-3.patch back out the previous patch, fix the right xf86MsgVerb call. fixed for real this time, closing, sorry for the noise. |
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When the X server starts, it attempts to open /dev/apm_bios normally, in order to try to access APM services in the kernel. If the kernel has APM support built in or loaded, and configured, etc. then APM support in the X server will generally work. However, if the user does not have any need for APM support on their machine and does not have it configured, or does not have a kernel with APM support loaded, then the X server will not be able to open /dev/apm_bios. That is normal behaviour, and not a bug or a problem of any kind. In this case, the X server realizes that it is unable to access the kernel's APM functions, and it just disables APM support. Users who do not want/need APM support don't need to know or care about this. However, the X server logs a line to the X server log file when it is unable to open the APM device, which scares a lot of users, who often think this is some kind of error, and may be responsible for some random problem they are having with the X server. (WW) Open APM failed (/dev/apm_bios) (No such device) Since the error message given above by the X server is not very detailed or informative to the average user, it is not surprising that many users consider this to be the cause of random problems, when it is just a harmless message. Most users probably don't even know what APM is, and are thus even more likely to think this (WW) warning is the cause of their problems. Solution: The above error message should be modified to be more informative to users in the log file, and be downgraded from (WW) warning to (II) info level. Something like: (II) Operating system APM services via /dev/apm_bios are unavailable, so APM power management features in the X server will not be used. If you require APM power management features, please ensure your BIOS and operating system kernel are configured to provide APM services. This message is just an informative message which can be safely ignored, and is not an error.