Corrupt LINUX ACPI tables in BIOS

[Mr.Guvernment]

^^would thicken the plot!

[Logos]

been following another thread on this topic on a Linux forum where I'm a member...hard to make a judgment...I've already changed my mind a couple of times After all I think Foxconn and Asus might just have not cared...cared about Linux. Can't think they really wanted to dismiss Linux...ExpressGate on the P5Q series...OK booting a mini distro in 5" (as they say...) might also serve the interests of Asus, doesn't necessary mean they like Linux. It's been an MS dream for ages to have mobo makers hard code their bios to protect Windows...no idea...only doubts...I'd love to have the answer from Foxconn at least...

[STEvil]

Only real way would be to start dumping bioses and run a database of boards/bios versions...

[sierra_bound]

Suggestion

Shouldn't this thread be moved to the Linux or Foxconn Support sections? Just a thought. As I mentioned earlier, this has little if anything to do with WCG.

[Logos]

Suggestion

Shouldn't this thread be moved to the Linux or Foxconn Support sections? Just a thought. As I mentioned earlier, this has little if anything to do with WCG.

agreed, may be to the Foxconn section, with a Linux tag (I think Foxconn section is more appropriate than Linux 'cause the board is the issue, not the OS)

[sierra_bound]

I don't have the permissions to move a thread in this section. Perhaps Dave could oblige me.

I think this is an interesting topic. I just don't think the thread belongs here. I did read the thread at the Ubuntu forum a few days ago in which the person with the user name TheAlmightyCthulhu said he had talked to Foxconn about the problem. That thread (now locked) also discusses a work-around (not for Linux beginners).

[STEvil]

Yeah i'll boot it over to the foxconn section.

edit - gave it a friendlier name as well.

[saaya]

thanks for moving it here, im in china atm and quite busy, ill reply later today

[saaya]

When it identifies the OS as Linux based, it direct to a table that LOOKS ok, but which causes a Linux OS to have all manner of weird ACPI related issues.

so there are problems when the linux acpi table is being used... that doesnt necessarily mean the table is bad, as you said, it looks ok, so couldnt it be that there is a problem in how the linux version you use reads or interprets the table? I dont know that much about linux or acpi, but for two things not working well together you are very fast in judging which of the two is two blame.

Microsoft has "certified" that the ACPI implementation on this board meets the standard, which it clearly does not.

it works for them, so thats probably all they care about?
maybe microsoft wants a seperate acpi table for linux and windows, and our bios engineers accidently borked the linux table... at most i could imagine that microsoft MIGHT ask us and other mobo makers to use a certain way of handling acpi tables that causes trouble for linux... thats already quite paranoid but i could actually believe something like that is possible... but thinking that us or any other mainboard maker creates a new way of handling acpi tables, risking to bork acpi compatibility with windows AND linux and putting a lot of time and energy into this, ONLY to cause Linux developers and users a headache... just doesnt make sense...

Sure, large corporations tend to be evil cause after all they only exist to make money, and sooner or later all the ideology fades and the management does quite immoral things to make more money or to secure their market position.

But then think about it, how would foxconn secure its market position or make any money by crippling linux acpi tables? that doesnt really make sense.. agreed? the one who profits from this is microsoft, to some extent, and microsoft sure as h3ll wont pay us or other mobo makers to cripple linux support, that would be way too dodgy for one of the largest corporations in the world and theyd get caught quickly i think.

its more realistically that microsoft wrote this code and is asking us and other mainboard manufacturers to use it. And even then, im not convinced that they wrote the code to cripple linux acpi support on purpose. id rather think its likely they want to seperate acpi tables for linux and windows, and then came up with some code to do this, and we and maybe other mainboard makers as well didnt implement it 100% correctly, which results in the linux acpi tables causing problems. again, we might have had the same issues with the windows tables too, but either us or microsoft noticed it and we then fixed it, while we definately dont test that much with linux as we do with windows, so we overlooked the problems for the linux acpi tables.

im just speculating...

Mate, it's not paranoia when they REALLY ARE out to get you!

dont you think microsoft can think of better ways to cause the open source community trouble than by crippling acpi tables?
its like calling "the 3rd world war is near, china is gonna get us" just cause china is exporting children toys that contain higher than allowed chemical levels that can hurt our kids health, and then say this is an attack by china and they are out to get us and they are doing this on purpose... :P

Read the article, fanboy. The BIOS directs Linux to a DIFFERENT TABLE than it does Windows. It does not use the same ACPI tables for both and goes to some lengths to make sure of it.

dude, chill out... please dont call people names just cause you dont agree with them... and as i said, i dont know that much about acpi and linux, but is it maybe possible for linux to use the windows acpi tables anyways?
my guess is microsoft is trying to seperate windows and linux acpi tables, but how can the bios know for sure if the os is windows or linux? it cant right... so then wouldnt it be the best for linux to just use the windows acpi tables? cause those tables will work for sure, as we test them and have the certified all the time...

its similar to IE vs FF and Opera, where microsoft pushed websites to check if they are beeing viewed by IE or FF, and when the browser identified itself as FF it might get different code that causes problems. The fix was easy back there as well, FF and Opera just pretend to be IE and there is no problem...

Because MS told you to..... Oh no that wouldn't happen! never has!

i dont think i ever talked to any microsoft employee in my entire life... at least not knowingly. so to me personally, no, microsoft didnt tell me to do anything, and to foxconn as a whole, i couldnt know, but im 100% sure microsoft didnt tell any of our engineers to purposely sabotage linux... thats just silly...

What is this? 20 mindless questions?

would you mind taking a chill pill?

Think for yourself for a change. The 'why?' is simple. $$$$$$$ Microsoft has a known history of handing massive kickbacks to hardware vendors who give them exclusive deals, just like they gave out massive bribes and 'salted' voting memberships in the recent OOXML standards scandal. Don't the words "anti trust" ring a bell with you?

so you think a microsoft guy hands over a suitcase of money to a foxconn guy and says "make sure you cripple the acpi tables for linux real good" ?

you honestly dont think thats paranoid?
im sure microsoft is trying to cause the open source community trouble, they keep doing it, and if you read posts of mine youll see im not a fan of this either, but the way you imagine how they do it is just really really unrealistic... you picture it quite james bond and hollywood like...

You work for who exactly?

*puts on tinfoil hat*
and you work for who? maybe asus or gigabyte and you only came up with this to try and make foxconn look bad?

dont you see how ridiculous all this paranoia is?

Exactly. Foxconn claim that the board meets the ACPI standard when if fact it does not. Even the implementation for Vista has dodgy workarounds built in to cater for Microsoft's sloppy work. When the guy who found the issue queried Foxconn about it they said that it was fine because MS said it was fine.

thats the real problem here, you ended up with a tech support employee who didnt really understand the problem.
how can you certify the acpi standard? with microsoft right? is there anybody else who certifies acpi tables? correct me if im wrong, but no, there isnt.
did microsoft certify the acpi tables? yes they did!
are they acpi tables faulty? the linux ones possibly are...
so how is it foxconns fault if the tables are not working fine?
If your buddy brings you car to a garage to have it checked, and they say the car is fine and the next day it breaks down, who do you blame, the garage or your buddy? you blaming your buddy atm... which doesnt make sense!

pwolfe, it's interesting you deliberately cost your customers more than necessary. Do you get kick-backs too? Or is a Linux based system just too hard for you to learn?

can you PLEASE mellow out and finally stop insulting people and stay on the topic?

Linux IS perfect for some situation, while Windows never is.

and this has what to do with this topic?
and you call other people fanboys?

I'm sorry, Ady, but I fail to see how being "vehemently opposed to using linux" on his own machines and being a "linux user for 9 years" constitutes congruent comments. One or the other is an outright lie. This is just another Microsoft fanboy that can't keep his story straight.

why do you feel the need to insult people left and right? you seriously need to take some time off and relax and work on your anger managment :P

Well, it looks like at least one Foxconn employee places the blame on it just being a bug, but I guess we'll have to wait until Monday for the official response. It's possible that the ACPI implementation was written by a group not so knowledgeable, at least according to the Foxconn employee in that thread, I wouldn't be surprised.

The part that gets me is Foxconn is being accused of specifically looking for Linux in a different manner, when the person in this post showed code from his ASUS board that's the exact same. While other motives "could" be in play here, I don't see why a motherboard manufacturer would try to limit their market.

havent had the chance to talk to our bios engineers yet, i might have time in the afternoon to catch one of them and ask him about the acpi tables. and im not surprised asus is using the same multiple table thing, im pretty sure its a microsoft recommended way of handling acpi tables. im curious if the code was indeed supplied by MS, and if it was already faulty when we and others got it, or if our and the asus bios engineers broke it somehow causing the linux acpi problems... its unlikely that asus and our engineers broke it in the same way, so most likely this is the code we all get from MS and its already broken...

I logged in to check for updates on the drama and noticed that "TheAlmightyCthulhu" had lost his avatar and his user title was somewhat uncomplimentary. I also discovered that my own user title is now "spilled the beans".

It seems that a particular admin has had it in for Ryan (TheAlmightyCthulhu) and has been looking for a way to get at him. It looks like he found something he could ponce up and use, too.

and MAYBE its just cause you and this other guy really enjoy all the attention you created with this, but the ubuntu community or at least the admin does NOT like that you cause a mayor manufacturer BAD PRESS that it actually doesnt deserve?
did you or this other guy ever think that far of what your actually trying to achieve?
I dont think you did, cause you jumped the gun quite quickly to blam foxconn and claim that this is done on purpose, when you had 0 proof, and now it actually looks like it has nothing to do with foxconn at all but is a common problem, either a bug or badly written code from microsoft.

thank you so very very much to you and TheAlmightyCthulhu for throwing tomatoes at foxconn and making the company look bad to thousands of people, for a problem that doesnt have anything to do with foxconn

[HDCHOPPER]

"isnt it pretty obvious that this is just a bug or simply badly written acpi tables"


it is to me

[Tony]

I talked to Carl today, all that is wrong is an old table in AMI source code, something that happens all the time if you deal with bios files a lot.

AMI have been asked to update the table, once done we all have nothing to worry about, even though the XP table was apparently being used regardless of the linux table.

Talk about a mountain out of a mole hill LOL

Good times

[Knight]

I talked to Carl today, all that is wrong is an old table in AMI source code, something that happens all the time if you deal with bios files a lot.

AMI have been asked to update the table, once done we all have nothing to worry about, even though the XP table was apparently being used regardless of the linux table.

Talk about a mountain out of a mole hill LOL

Good times

Thank you Tony and Saaya. It is sad to see a community like this turn into a war zone over an innocent glitch. Thank you two for keeping cool with all this bickering.

[saaya]

thanks tony
so even my suspicion it COULD have been microsoft supplying this broken code POSSIBLY to cause linux trouble was paranoid...
thats at least something i could imagine as possible tho, but even that didnt make much sense... so it was ami after all who forgot to update the tables, ok....
its still interesting though WHY ami uses seperate tables and tries to pin down what OS you use and then provide a specific table...
I guess they only meant good and wanted to be able to provide optimized tables for different OSes, but then they didnt keep all the tables up to date...

so yeah, after all there seems to be no evil whatsoever in this, its just a glitch...
actually, the only evil in all this is some people causing a few big companies a big headache and bad press without getting their facts straight.

ill check with our bios engineers now and will see if we can ping ami about updating the table or fix it ourselves.

Thank you Tony and Saaya. It is sad to see a community like this turn into a war zone over an innocent glitch. Thank you two for keeping cool with all this bickering.

thanks
yeah its sad to see how fast discussions go from topic based to opinion based and then just low level barking and grunting at each other :/

[STEvil]

I talked to Carl today, all that is wrong is an old table in AMI source code, something that happens all the time if you deal with bios files a lot.

AMI have been asked to update the table, once done we all have nothing to worry about, even though the XP table was apparently being used regardless of the linux table.

Talk about a mountain out of a mole hill LOL

Good times

Just what I thought

[HDCHOPPER]

let it be known here that ppl like saaya & Tony & STEvil
will do all thay can for YOU even tho attacked insted of being asked for an answer

my hats off to you guys !

[saaya]

thanks man
FYI, our engineers hooked up with the linux guys and the AMI crew and it seems to be fixed on both sides now.
our BIOS carries a propper ACPI table now which should be used in all future AMI BIOS releases for foxconn boards, and at the same time the kernel developer responsible for ACPI at redhat and ubuntu updated the kernel. it should use the windows vista ACPI table now which should always work since it needs to be certified by MS to get the WHQL stamp