Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> 	arguably I should have told it that I was doing this.  Of
> 	course, there's currently no way to tell acpi about switches,
> 	whether it's inserting or removing an Ultrabay DVD drive

ACPI /should/ be able to tell /you/. The switchable devices should all
be marked as such in the DSDT, with AML methods given for testing their
presence and handling change notifications from the hardware (if we're
not asleep at the time). If we are asleep, we're supposed to check such
devices on wake.

Now, whether we're yet /doing/ any of that is another question, but
once implementation is complete, it should not be necessary to tell
ACPI that you've switched something.

Some UI will still be needed to tell ACPI you intend to switch something,
though, in case the something has AML methods that need to be run first
to put it in a depowered, safe-to-remove state.

-Chap