how to submit patches to i8k kernel driver

[Toby Murray]

My apologies if this is the wrong forum in which to ask this question.
However, I've got a patch for the i8k kernel driver that adds support
for extra sensors found on many Dell laptops (even the my old circa
April 2002 Inspiron 8100 supports an extra sensor, not currently exposed
by the i8k driver). 

The patch adds support for the new sensors to appear in the output
for /proc/i8k. To keep the driver backwards compatible, the user must
request the extra info by using a new ioctl - I8K_PROC_FMT, which is
used to request that the output for the /proc/i8k for this particular
instance appear in a different format version. I have added support for
a new version which naturally exposes this new info. 

This modification is nice in that it hides the functionality from
current apps that don't expect it - eg. gkrelm, GNOME sensors applet
etc. For those apps that are modified to work with it, this only
requires them to make an extra ioctl() after initially
open()ing /proc/i8k.

My question is how to go about getting this into the wild. The i8k
driver is part of the mainline kernel, so perhaps submitting a patch to
lkml is appropriate. The driver is also part of the 'i8kutils' package
in universe, so perhaps submitting the patch against this package might
be a good idea. Of course, things are complicated by the fact that the
version of i8k.ko in the current stable kernel from kernel.org is
different from that in the i8kutils package.

I have tried contacting the i8kutils maintainer, but have had no
response yet. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Toby