acpidump(8)

NAME

acpidump - dump ACPI tables and ASL

SYNOPSIS

acpidump  [-d]  [-t]   [-h]   [-v]   [-f   dsdt_input]   [-o
dsdt_output]

DESCRIPTION

The acpidump utility analyzes ACPI tables in physical memory

and can dump
them to a file. In addition, acpidump can call iasl(8) to

disassemble
AML (ACPI Machine Language) found in these tables and dump

them as ASL
(ACPI Source Language) to stdout.

ACPI tables have an essential data block (the DSDT, Differ

entiated System
Description Table) that includes information used on the

kernel side such
as detailed information about PnP hardware, procedures for

controlling
power management support, and so on. The acpidump utility

can extract
the DSDT data block from physical memory and store it into

an output file
and optionally also disassemble it. If any Secondary System

Description
Table (SSDT) entries exist, they will also be included in

the output file
and disassembly.

When acpidump is invoked without the -f option, it will read

ACPI tables
from physical memory via /dev/mem. First it searches for

the RSDP (Root
System Description Pointer), which has the signature "RSD

PTR ", and then
gets the RSDT (Root System Description Table), which in

cludes a list of
pointers to physical memory addresses for other tables. The

RSDT itself
and all other tables linked from RSDT are generically called

SDTs (System
Description Tables) and their header has a common format

which consists
of items such as Signature, Length, Revision, Checksum,

OEMID, OEM Table
ID, OEM Revision, Creator ID and Creator Revision. When in

voked with the
-t flag, the acpidump utility dumps contents of the follow

ing tables:

DSDT
ECDT
FACS
FADT
HPET
MADT
MCFG
RSD PTR
RSDT

The RSDT contains a pointer to the physical memory address

of the FACP
(Fixed ACPI Description Table). The FACP defines static

system information about power management support (ACPI Hardware Register

Implementation) such as interrupt mode (INT_MODEL), SCI interrupt num

ber, SMI command port (SMI_CMD) and the location of ACPI registers. The

FACP also
has a pointer to a physical memory address for the DSDT.

While the other
tables are fixed format, the DSDT consists of free-formatted

AML data.

OPTIONS

The following options are supported by acpidump:

-d Disassemble the DSDT into ASL using iasl(8) and

print the results

to stdout.

-t Dump the contents of the various fixed tables listed

above.

-h Displays usage and exit.

-v Enable verbose messages.

-f dsdt_input

Load the DSDT from the specified file instead of

physical memory.
Since only the DSDT is stored in the file, the -t

flag may not be
used with this option.

-o dsdt_output

Store the DSDT data block from physical memory into

the specified
file.

FILES

/dev/mem

EXAMPLES

This example dumps the DSDT from physical memory to foo.ds

dt. It also
prints the contents of various system tables and disassem

bles the AML
contained in the DSDT to stdout, redirecting the output to

foo.asl.

# acpidump -t -d -o foo.dsdt > foo.asl

This example reads a DSDT file and disassembles it to std

out. Verbose
messages are enabled.

# acpidump -v -d -f foo.dsdt

SEE ALSO

acpi(4), mem(4), acpiconf(8), acpidb(8), iasl(8)

HISTORY

The acpidump utility first appeared in FreeBSD 5.0 and was

rewritten to
use iasl(8) for FreeBSD 5.2.

AUTHORS

Doug Rabson <dfr@FreeBSD.org>
Mitsuru IWASAKI <iwasaki@FreeBSD.org>
Yasuo YOKOYAMA <yokoyama@jp.FreeBSD.org>
Nate Lawson <njl@FreeBSD.org>

Some contributions made by Chitoshi Ohsawa <oh

sawa@catv1.ccn-net.ne.jp>,
Takayasu IWANASHI <takayasu@wendy.a.perfect-liberty.or.jp>,

Yoshihiko
SARUMARU <mistral@imasy.or.jp>, Hiroki Sato <hrs@FreeB

SD.org>, Michael
Lucas <mwlucas@blackhelicopters.org> and Michael Smith
<msmith@FreeBSD.org>.

BUGS

The current implementation does not dump the BOOT structure

or other miscellaneous tables.

BSD February 14, 2005

BSD