monitor brightness not saved on shutdown

**daobra_daloosh** · November 25th, 2015

Hello all,

I recently installed ubuntu 14.04 LTS on my Vaio laptop and am really happy with it. I do have two issues of which I will list one here.

The brightness level in system preferences is not saved on shutdown. So each time I startup the screen is at full brightness. Anyone any ideas on how to troubleshoot this?

**Melnik_Hoogland** · November 25th, 2015

There's already been a topic on this, but I had to modify it some to make it work. Based on sophie5's post at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...556&p=13217954:

Step 1
Create two scripts in your home directory.

Put the following in ~/brightness-save.sh:

Code:

#!/bin/bash


SAVEFILE="/var/brightness/last_brightness"


mkdir -p $(dirname $SAVEFILE)


cat /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness > $SAVEFILE
#echo "Current screen brightness saved as "$(cat $SAVEFILE)"."


exit 0

And put this in ~/brightness-reset.sh:

Code:

#!/bin/bash


DEFAULT_BRIGHTNESS=7
SAVEFILE="/var/brightness/last_brightness"


if [ -f $SAVEFILE ];
then
   echo $(cat $SAVEFILE) > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
    #echo "Screen brightness reset to "$(cat $SAVEFILE)"."
else
   echo $DEFAULT_BRIGHTNESS > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
    #echo "Screen brightness set to default ("$DEFAULT_BRIGHTNESS")."
fi


exit 0

Step 2
Open a terminal, go to your home directory (cd ~/) and run the following commands, one after another:

Code:

sudo bash
cp ./brightness-reset.sh /etc/init.d
cp ./brightness-save.sh /etc/init.d
chmod +x /etc/init.d/brightness-reset.sh
chmod +x /etc/init.d/brightness-save.sh
ln -s /etc/init.d/brightness-save.sh /etc/rc0.d/S10brightness-save
ln -s /etc/init.d/brightness-save.sh /etc/rc6.d/S10brightness-save
exit

Step 3
Open the file /etc/rc.local as root:

Code:

gksudo gedit /etc/rc.local

If gksudo isn't installed, install it:

Code:

sudo apt-get install gksu

Insert the following code just before line with exit 0. (be sure to save it afterwards)

Code:

etc/init.d/brightness-reset.sh

Step 4
You can delete brightness-save.sh and brightness-reset.sh from your home directory.

Tested and working on my Acer Aspire E11 with 14.04.

**daobra_daloosh** · November 25th, 2015

OK I tried this, unfortunately it didn't work. I am however not used to using terminal so at first I have executed the commands in brightness-save.sh in terminal. That went until the last line
cat /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness > $SAVEFILE

Not sure if that messed things up but unfortunately no fix just yet. Anything I can check or try?

Thanks for your help!

**Melnik_Hoogland** · November 26th, 2015

Make sure you've rebooted at least once since you set the brightness scripts up (to make sure there is (or at least should be) a brightness save file) then execute these commands and post the output (in code tags please):

Code:

cat /var/brightness/last_brightness
cat /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
cat /etc/init.d/brightness-save.sh
cat /etc/init.d/brightness-reset.sh
ls -l /etc/rc0.d/S10brightness-save /etc/rc6.d/S10brightness-save
cat /etc/rc.local

This will help us debug what is going on.

Also, what do you mean by "that went until the last line"? Did the last line give an error? If it did, please post the error, again in code tags please.

EDIT: Just looked at some posts about controlling brightness levels on Vaios; I'm going to wait for you to post the output of those commands but if I'm right I think I know what's going on and how to fix it.