Bugzilla Bug 131534

triggered because of compilation problems of the DST and triggering the
following errors :

Apr 16 23:20:25 laptop ACPI Error (nsxfeval-0242): Handle is NULL and Pathname
i
s relative [20060127]
Apr 16 23:20:25 laptop ACPI Error (nsxfeval-0242): Handle is NULL and Pathname
i
s relative [20060127]
Apr 16 23:20:25 laptop ACPI Error (nsxfeval-0242): Handle is NULL and Pathname
i
s relative [20060127]
Apr 16 23:20:25 laptop ACPI Error (nsxfeval-0242): Handle is NULL and Pathname
i
s relative [20060127]

as explained here :

http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0602.1/0692.html

the messages as bogus and had been fixed later as can be seen by the following
patch :

http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/lenb/linux-acpi-2.6.git;a=commitdiff_plain;h=52fc0b026e99b5d5d585095148d997d5634bbc25;hp=46358614ed5b031797522f1020e989c959a8d8a6

adding this patch to the gentoo provided patches, until it gets applied
upstream (should had been part of this pull: http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/4/3/228
but it is still not applied as of 2.6.16-rc3) would prevent this issue to be
raised and investigated further for all users running a 2.6.16 kernel the
least.

Created an attachment (id=85710) [edit]
acpi-handle-null-flood.patch

That patch is too large to include. Please confirm that this smaller one
resolves your problem.

proposed patch confirmed to work.

i agree that a proposed fix shouldn't apply the full patch, but only the
following snippet (composed mostly of formatting and other null changes) from
that patch :

file:a95f636dc35d454e16865732cff8e4c57ab3731f ->
file:71e7769d7dafcf66653cbb0d9ebb0f9e34c9b9c7

and obtained by doing (attached, even if i keep thinking there should be an
easier way to get it)

mkdir -p ~a/drivers/acpi/namespace
git-cat-file blob a95f636dc35d454e16865732cff8e4c57ab3731f >
~/a/drivers/acpi/namespace/nsxfeval.c
mkdir -p ~/b/drivers/acpi/namespace
git-cat-file blob 71e7769d7dafcf66653cbb0d9ebb0f9e34c9b9c7 >
~/b/drivers/acpi/namespace/nsxfeval.c
cd
diff -urp a b > acpica-20060210-nsxfeval.patch
rm -rf a b

or the corresponding snippet from that patch (attached as
acpica-20060210-nsxfeval-debug.patch), and this way preventing future merge
conflicts or divergent code from upstream.

sadly on that line, confirmed with Len (the Linux ACPI maintainer) that this
patchset won't be merged upstream until 2.6.18 the least.

Created an attachment (id=85733) [edit]
nsxfeval.c changes as part of acpica-20060210

Created an attachment (id=85735) [edit]
snippet from nsxfeval.c changes part of acpica-20060210

We'll only take whats necessary, the larger patch contains other code changes
(and actually would increase the chance of conflict).

Thanks for testing.

Fixed in gentoo-sources-2.6.16-r5 (genpatches-2.6.16-7)