ACPI Exception AE_BAD_ADDRESS in Lenovo ThinkPad S440

[Juan Ramón Molina Menor]

>              I’ve just got a Lenovo ThinkPad S440 and would like to test
>         FreeBSD
>              10.2-BETA2 on it. I’ve tried with the UEFI memstick image
>              (FreeBSD-10.2-BETA2-amd64-uefi-mini-memstick.img.xz).
>         Unfortunately,
>              shortly after the installer starts, the screen fills with
>         errors
>              related to ACPI thermal zones:
>
>              ACPI Exception: AE_BAD_ADDRESS, Returned by Handler for
>              [EmbeddedControl] (20150515/evregion-312) S
>         (20150515/psparse-552)
>
>              I have tested some features of the acpi_ibm, some do not
>         work: fan
>              control, for example, but I’m not sure I’m doing it right
>         and this
>              is an issue for later.
>
>              I’ve created a PR with the information asked for in the
>         ACPI chapter
>              of the handbook:
>         https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=201678
>
>              Best regards,
>              Juan
>              _______________________________________________
>         freebsd-acpi at freebsd.org <mailto:freebsd-acpi at freebsd.org>
>         <mailto:freebsd-acpi at freebsd.org
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>
>
>         IIRC, fan control has not worked since the days of the T61.
>         Newer BIOS
>         end EC don't seem to work. The "ACPI Exception: AE_BAD_ADDRESS" has
>         shown up on various systems for a while.It's reportedly harmless.
>
>
>     Thanks Kevin. Could you please give me a hint for silencing these
>     errors? They are making very hard to use the installer or live USB
>     for testing purposes. I guess the BIOS will take care of thermal and
>     fan control.
>
>
> You could edit the syslogd configuration, but that does not really make
> sense when running the installer. Lars' suggestion for using another VTY
> will work, though.
>
> When I was getting these errors, I only saw a burst of them earlier in
> the boot process. Sounds like you are seeing s different manifestation. :-(

Yes, three error lines every 2-3 seconds… :(



>         Brightness is finally working on most or all. Thermal should
>         show up in
>         hw.acpi and dev.cpu.
>
>
>     Brightness levels are correctly shown (1-100) after loading the
>     acpi_video kernel module, but I cannot change them. Maybe it’s the
>     Haswell chip not responding. I’m going to try CURRENT.
>
>
>   Haswell is still officially not supported, so it is a possibility.
> Brightness works on Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge.  Last I heard, Haswell
> support is hoped for in September. I believe that i915 support in
> CURRENT is very close to that in 10-STABLE.
>
> How are you attempting to adjust brightness? Keys or the sysctl? At
> least on T and X systems, the rightness keys (and any other in blue)
> require the Fn key to work. Volume and mute are about the only ones that
> work without Fn on my system, as they are dedicated keys on T systems,
> Have you tried setting the brightness with sysctl?
> hw.acpi.video.lcd0.brightness.

If I understand well the documentation, for keys to work I have to play 
with them in devd. I have not had the time to explore it. Setting values 
directly with sysctl between 0 and 100 do work, but do not change the 
LCD brightness. Funny enough, I can toggle between 49 and 51 with the Fn 
keys, no more, no less. I guess I have to wait for Haswell support.


>     Thermal hw.acpi sysctls show bogus values, but dev.cpu works after
>     loading the coretemp kernel module.
>
>
> As far as I know, most hw.acpi.thermal values are set by the system at
> boot and are fixed. That includes all prefaced with '_'. The ones
> reporting '-1' simply indicate a lack of support on your system. Here
> are my values:
> hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._TSP: -1
> hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._TC2: -1
> hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._TC1: -1
> hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._ACx: -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
> hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._CRT: 98.0C
> hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._HOT: -1
> hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._PSV: -1
> hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.thermal_flags: 0
> hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.passive_cooling: 0
> hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.active: -1
> hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.temperature: 47.0C
> hw.acpi.thermal.user_override: 0
> hw.acpi.thermal.polling_rate: 10
> hw.acpi.thermal.min_runtime: 0

Thanks, I understand. Mine are similar, excepting an absolute zero 
(-273.2C):

hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._TSP: -1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._TC2: -1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._TC1: -1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._ACx: -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._CRT: 105.0C
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._HOT: -1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._PSV: -1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.thermal_flags: 0
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.passive_cooling: 0
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.active: -2
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.temperature: -273.2C
hw.acpi.thermal.user_override: 0
hw.acpi.thermal.polling_rate: 10
hw.acpi.thermal.min_runtime: 0


> A bit of good news is that support for ThinkPads usually improves fairly
> quickly as they tend to be the choice of several of the BSD developers,
> though the S series is not listed by Lenovo as a ThinkPad, but just a
> Lenovo Laptop. They appear to use less expensive processors (Celeron),
> smaller memorys and hard drives (actually eMMCs). Notably, they lack the
> ThinkPad TrackPoint, though a few ThinkPads did, as well, until customer
> feedback caused Lenovo to restore it. (Yes! I hate touchpads!)

My S440 has a i3-4030U processor, a 128GB SSD, 4GB RAM and a ThinkPad 
TrackPoint, and it’s perfect for my limited roaming needs… but only 
under Windows, that’s it.

Best regards,
Juan