Operation Manual
WARNING: Problems Booting without ACPI
Some newer machines (especially SMP systems and AMD64 systems) need ACPI
for conguring the hardware correctly. On these machines, disabling ACPI can
cause problems.
Sometimes, the machine is confused by hardware that is attached over USB or FireWire.
If a machine refuses to boot, unplug all unneeded hardware and try again.
Monitor the boot messages of the system with the command dmesg | grep -2i
acpi (or all messages, because the problem may not be caused by ACPI) after booting.
If an error occurs while parsing an ACPI table, the most important table—the DSDT
(Differentiated System Description Table)—can be replaced with an improved version.
In this case, the faulty DSDT of the BIOS is ignored. The procedure is described in
Section 33.4.1, “ACPI Activated with Hardware Support but Functions Do Not Work”
(page 560).
In the kernel conguration, there is a switch for activating ACPI debug messages. If a
kernel with ACPI debugging is compiled and installed, experts searching for an error
can be supported with detailed information.
If you experience BIOS or hardware problems, it is always advisable to contact the
manufacturers. Especially if they do not always provide assistance for Linux, they
should be confronted with the problems. Manufacturers will only take the issue seriously
if they realize that an adequate number of their customers use Linux.
33.2.3.1 For More Information
•
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/ACPI-HOWTO/ (detailed ACPI HOWTO, contains
DSDT patches)
•
http://www.acpi.info (Advanced Conguration & Power Interface Speci-
cation)
•
http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/acpi/ (the ACPI4Linux project
at Sourceforge)
•
http://acpi.sourceforge.net/dsdt/index.php (DSDT patches by
Bruno Ducrot)
Power Management 557