kern/135070: [acpi] BIOS resource allocation and FreeBSD ACPI

[Mario Pavlov]

>Number:         135070
>Category:       kern
>Synopsis:       [acpi] BIOS resource allocation and FreeBSD ACPI
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    freebsd-bugs
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Sat May 30 08:20:01 UTC 2009
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Mario Pavlov
>Release:        7-STABLE, 8-CURRENT
>Organization:
>Environment:
FreeBSD  8.0-CURRENT-200905 FreeBSD 8.0-CURRENT-200905 #0: Tue May 19 19:47:24 EEST 2009     root@:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386
>Description:
The problem is on many laptops (mostly Acer). If I understand it correctly it's because some BIOSes clear the resources for various hardware when ACPI is enabled. And apparently FreeBSD relies on the BIOS to allocated resources for hardware. Probably FreeBSD would have to be able to allocate resources on its own.
This is a piece of verbose output on my Acer Aspire 5920:

==================================================================================
bge0: <Broadcom NetLink Gigabit Ethernet Controller, ASIC rev. 0xb002> irq 17 at device 0.0 on pci8
pcib3: bge0 requested unsupported memory range 0-0xffffffffffffffff (decoding 0-0, 0-0)
bge0: 0x10000 bytes of rid 0x10 res 3 failed (0, 0xffffffffffffffff).
bge0: couldn't map memory
device_attach: bge0 attach returned 6
==================================================================================

more verbose and complete output can be found here: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-mobile/2008-May/010727.html

the same happens with Acer Aspire 3680:

==================================================================================
ath0: <Atheros 5424/2424> irq 17 at device 0.0 on pci3
ath0: 0x10000 bytes of rid 0x10 res 3 failed (0, 0xffffffff).
ath0: cannot map register space
device_attach: ath0 attach returned 6
==================================================================================

complete dmesg output for this laptop can be found here: http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=206
as well as more information about the problem

exactly the same problem has been reported with Acer Aspire 6292
I'm positive that other laptops have the same problem.

these are different laptops with different hardware but have the same problem
that's why I think it's the BIOS resource allocation and ACPI
I have updated my laptop's BIOS to the latest version from Acer but this didn't fix the problem...
I tried several operating systems:
FreeBSD - doesn't work
NetBSD - doesn't work
OpenSolaris - works
Linux - works
Windows - works

it would be absolutely fantastic if someone could take a look at this issue!
I'm always available for testing and providing more information
>How-To-Repeat:
the problem can be easily reproduced if you have Acer Aspire 5920, 3680, 6292 or other Acer laptop, possibly laptops from other vendors have this problem...
the problem can be seen when you just boot FreeBSD, it boots fine but you can see the allocation problem in the output
>Fix:
there is a very dirty hack by a guy who has one of the problematic laptops
the patch can be found here: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-acpi/2008-May/004905.html

>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: