Macbook brightness issues.

[jesuspoet]

I can't figure out how to change the brightness settings on my Macbook. I've searched several forums, but haven't found anything at least simple enough for me to be able to set up on here. Do y'all know what I need to do?

[miniyak]

if you havn't all ready, right click on a panel and choose add to panel, then select the brightness applet

it should be the 3rd or 5th entry

you should also have fn keyboard shortcuts that will turn the brightness down manually... but i dont know, ive never used a macbook

hope that helps

[jesuspoet]

if you havn't all ready, right click on a panel and choose add to panel, then select the brightness applet

it should be the 3rd or 5th entry

you should also have fn keyboard shortcuts that will turn the brightness down manually... but i dont know, ive never used a macbook

hope that helps

I appreciate the suggestion, but for some reason the applet is not working on my Macbook. Any other ideas?

[Joeb454]

Thread moved to Apple Users

[miniyak]

hmm... odd, im not sure

but, the model of your macbook, the version of ubuntu your using and the type of install could all be important info for anybody stumbling across your thread whom has a similar issue.

[Seq]

If you've got a macbook with Intel graphics, this is a regression regarding it's behaviour. I've put a bug in launchpad. It seems to be assigned to nobody.

Basically the intel X driver used to touch the hardware directly, including brightness, modesetting, etc. The 'proper' way to do this going forward is to move all hardware interactions to the kernel level. The intel driver has done this. Modesetting is done in-kernel now, and brightness is handled via ACPI or platform drivers (Most laptops use acpi for brightness as I understand it).

Unfortunately the macbook's backlight is not exposed via ACPI (not sure if this is an issue with apple's BIOS compatability, or if ACPI is handled separately). I've been meaning to look into writing a platform module for doing the backlight (since the actual backlight code exists already). Unfortunately I haven't gotten around to it yet.

[Seq]

Also, as a workaround you can install pommed and gpomme. The former is a system service, while the latter provides graphical feedback (you will need to set that up as a startup app in your session).

I've found it can cause some audio issues as it wrestles with pulse audio over volume levels.

[_mario_]

I've been meaning to look into writing a platform module for doing the backlight (since the actual backlight code exists already). Unfortunately I haven't gotten around to it yet.

The older hal handler that memory-mapped the graphics adapter's registers to userland via /dev/mem has been deprecated and removed in recent hal versions. Please do not re-implement them.

Writing a platform module isn't necessary (and btw won't get accepted upstream). Despite its name the mbp_nvidia_bl driver can also support your machines, because it actually uses a firmware interface that is present on all machines since Apple switched to Intel processors.

We only need to extend its device table. In order to do so, I need the output of:

sudo dmidecode --string system-product-name

and whether the machine incorporates an Intel or Nvidia chipset (mainboard chipset, not graphics!).

ciao,
Mario