HOWTO: Adjust brightness on Sony Vaio

[Sir Bogoff]

Upon installing Ubuntu 5.10 on my Sony Vaio I discovered that the brightness was really bad. I hunted around for some info but nothing would keep the brightness settings upon reboot. Sure I could go into a terminal and reset it but what a pain in the ****.

I tried this first (you can do this if you like but try lower down first).
Install the package spicctrl (this is in universe so you need to make sure you repository's are up to date),

sudo apt-get install spicctrl

which gives you command-line control over brightness . Try

spicctrl -b 244

to brighten the screen (the higher the number the brighter, the lower..well I am sure you can figure it out).

This worked great until I rebooted and then back to square one.


Now, this works on my Vaio PCG-GRX600P in breezy and I would presume other Vaio models but seeing as how I only have the one I can't swear to it. If it works for you, post your result here. If it doesn't, well sorry about your luck but I found this on my own and I am a learner at this.

Step 1.

sudo chown system_username /proc/acpi/sony/brightness 
echo "n" > /proc/acpi/sony/brightness

where n is a number between 1 and 8.
Note that the quotes around the numeric value are required.

1 is the dimmest setting and 8 is the brightest.
Play around until you find the one you prefer but remember it for step 2.

sudo chown root /proc/acpi/sony/brightness

Step 2.

sudo chown system_username /proc/acpi/sony/brightness_default
echo "n" > /proc/acpi/sony/brightness_default

where n is the same number that you set it to in step 1.

sudo chown root /proc/acpi/sony/brightness_default

Now try a reboot (you don't have to obviously) to see if the settings stick.

Hope that worked for you.

These two work in Hoary but I couldn't say about the rest of it.

echo "1" > /proc/acpi/sony/brt

sets the lowest screen brightness

echo "8" > /proc/acpi/sony/brt

sets the highest screen brightness