I have a bunch of Dell servers around here that have chipsets supporting HPET (like ICH5) but they don't have the HPET ACPI entry. I have talked to Dell technical support and this is because no Microsoft OS uses HPET.
At boot Linux looks for the HPET ACPI entry to know if there is HPET support. Of course on my Dell machines it says there isn't any.
What is involved in the HPET ACPI entry? Would it be easy to modify the kernel to look for this device without the entry?
* Jon Smirl jonsmirl@gmail.com [050608 21:28]:
At boot Linux looks for the HPET ACPI entry to know if there is HPET support. Of course on my Dell machines it says there isn't any.
What is involved in the HPET ACPI entry? Would it be easy to modify the kernel to look for this device without the entry?
Yes, indeed. The only useful information passed in the HPET table is the start address of the timer. you could add a kernel parameter "hpet_addr" that passes the address instead, or something similar.
Stefan
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Jon Smirl -
Stefan Reinauer