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Hi BIOS! My Name Is “Linux”, Or Is It?

Posted by Sander_Marechal on · 5 comments
My Technophilic Musings		Mail this story
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A couple of days ago, I read this on Matthew Garrette’s blog, where he tells us about a vendor’s BIOS trying to figure out the OS type/version and setting things around on deciding the OS it is running. The call in question was _OSI(“Linux”). He goes on to say that the action the firmware takes, on finding out if the OS is linux, was probably inaccurate and it was good that linux kernel DOES NOT identify itself as “Linux” and returns false for the _OSI(“Linux”) and instead returns true when probed for Windows. That got me thinking, the first thought being that isn’t this a BIG flaw in the kernel. But “Never make judgements straightaway”, I have learnt in the past. So, thought about reading it a bit more. After some googling around, I came to know the sound reasoning behind the decision.

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Comments (5)

tracyanne ·
that is worth reading. I think it will help explain why strange things happen when Linux is installed on some hardware.
Sander_Marechal Story submitter ·
Link to the PDF: ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/people/trenn/ ACPI_BIOS_on_Linux_guide/acpi_guideline_for_vendors.pdf

Reading through that, it occurs to me how really badly designed that ACPI in the BIOS (and the BIOS in general) really is. It's so bad that http://boycottnovell.com/2008/07/25/foxconn-bios-acpi/ doesn't seem too far fetched anymore. Checking version strings is really a big no-no. BIOS designers should be checking for capabilities and not worry about what OS is running. E.g.:

If ( _Have ("MonitorSuspend", "1.0") ) {     # Do something clever }

If ( _Have("HDDSuspend", "2.0") ) {     # Do something smart } Else {     If ( _Have("HDDSuspend", "1.0") )     {         # Do something a bit less smart     } }

etcetera. This is really API design 101. Bad ACPI designers. No twinkie for you!
azerthoth ·
Sander, your ftp link broke formating.
Sander_Marechal Story submitter ·
Should be fixed now.
azerthoth ·
thanks, I can read the whole thing now.

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