e.g. a Sony Vaio Y-series, where upon seeing the debugging data kernel developer Matthew Garrett (mjg) pronounced it “what an awful implementation — utterly broken”, there is hope yet.
Matthew has been working on native backlight control for a while, and for Intel hardware, there’s currently only one patch left to merge onto Linus’ kernel tree; it applies cleanly onto the most recent kernel release candidate (3.0-rc7).
Unfortunately, by default the ACPI subsystem will still be used if available, which is the sensible default. You do want to use the predefined backlight values whenever possible, not the raw values the graphics card let you set.
Ubuntu users have been resorting to Kamal Mostafa’s linux-kamal-mjgbacklight repository, which enables native backlight control, disable the ACPI video driver, and provide a patched GNOME Power Manager that can interface with the native backlight control.
The workaround I came up with is more lightweight — it just uses inotify-tools to monitor the brightness file, and apply an appropriate equivalent value to the native backlight control. Feel free to use this if you’re affected by a similar problem.
Hi,
I am running Ubuntu Oneiric, standard distribution kernel, on a Dell Inspiron 640m. The graphics card is an Intel 945GM.
* lspci extract :
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
* uname -a :
Linux arwen 3.0.0-16-generic #29-Ubuntu SMP Tue Feb 14 12:49:42 UTC 2012 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
My backlight control seems to be broken. Problem description : the function keys make huge leaps from max to min, or min to max (3 steps instead of 8). Surprisingly the xbacklight command, used in a console, works correctly.
Despite what I read on Kamal Mostafa launchpad repository, adding “acpi_backlight=vendor” to the boot parameters does yield a better result. So I decided to give your script a try
Well, running it as a non-root user, I get permissions errors. Normal. But running it as root (via sudo) returns me these errors for a single function keypress :
./sync-acpi-intel.sh: ligne 58 : echo: erreur d’écriture : Argument invalide
./sync-acpi-intel.sh: ligne 58 : echo: erreur d’écriture : Argument invalide
That’s weird as the brightness file is present :
fabrice@arwen:~$ ls -1 /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight
actual_brightness
bl_power
brightness
device
max_brightness
power
subsystem
type
uevent
I would be grateful for any idea which would improve the situation…
Thanks !
PS : this is a regression as in a previous ubuntu distribution (but can’t remember which one) the function keys were adjusting the brightness correctly.
Not sure why the script fails — most of the time, when the scripts I write fail on Ubuntu it’s because I had bash-isms in it but use /bin/sh (which works if /bin/sh is actually Bash but not when it’s Dash like in Ubuntu), but here the script actually uses Bash anyway. You can perhaps try editing that line and not redirecting the echo output, so you can at least see what’s being outputted?
Um, never mind. After posting, I did some more tests and the problem is not at the kernel level (which one could suppose with the behavior of the xbacklight command) : When I am logged into the recovery console, the brightness keys behave correctly.
So there is something in the GUI interfering with the backlight control. It looks like keypresses are counted double or something like that.
Still don’t know who is responsible for that so if you have any idea…
Kamal probably knows better than I do — most of the Ubuntu systems I manage are headless servers
I’m mostly a Fedora person on laptops.
Still struggling.
Even more weird, whether in gnome, unity or cinnamon, I have the same strange thing :
- when the focus is on the desktop, or any other application window, the brightness skip steps like related above
- when the application menu or the unity/gnome lenses are opened, ths brightness does not skip steps.
It must have to do with the way keyboard events are captured and interpreted, but I can’t go much further on my own. I need some advice now.
Looks finally like your script won’t be helpful to me. Anyway, thanks for your answers and time. I’m gonna try a post on ubuntu forums ; may be some specialist there can get me going.
Yes, mine is only useful in systems where the acpi_video0 interface is totally ignored. While I’m curious as to what causes the errors you see running it, I’m sure you have better things to do (like getting the backlight control working!)
Do you see the problem on every desktop, or just Unity? Might help localize the problem to either something in X generally, or a specific desktop (Unity, GNOME, KDE…)
Every desktop, not only unity. But not in the recovery console, if one call also ‘X’ such a thing
With sudo showkey I observe that the brightness keys are considered pressed/released twice whether only once.
fabrice@arwen:~$ sudo showkey
le mode clavier était RAW
[ si vous essayez cela sous X Window, cela peut ne pas fonctionner
étant donné que le serveur X utilise également /dev/console ]
appuyer sur n’importe quelle touche (le programme terminera 10s après la dernière touche enfoncée)…
code clavier 28 relâcher % Enter release after launching showkey
code clavier 57 appuyer % space pressed
code clavier 57 relâcher % space released
code clavier 224 appuyer % brightness-down pressed
code clavier 224 relâcher % brightness-down released
code clavier 224 appuyer % ???
code clavier 224 relâcher % ???
Making progress, but still looking for what is doubling the key press/release event. I’m going to have a look into the bios.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/emgd/+bug/711172
add to kernel command line:
acpi_backlight=vendor
and you are done!
Tried that (see first post). Does not work.
Thanks for your interest.
thanx guy, after a few tweaks to make it work with my acer aspire 7715z laptop worked great
my multiplier number is a lot hier then 500 some around 73695 lol
cat /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/max_brightness
736950
then changed the line that sets the backlight value into intel_backlight/brightness
INTEL_BRIGHTNESS=$((INTEL_MAX-(MULTIPLIER*(BRIGHTNESS+1))))
and set the script to write 0 for the britest setting, my intel backlight is backwords.
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