Toshiba A665 Laptop -- Illuminated Backlit Keyboard

[pierreyy]

bump

[hydrox24]

Just upgraded my laptop to 12.04 and now, when I hit the keyboard backlight function key (Fn + z) I get the popup.

The popup, if compared to the one for volume, is similar to having the volume off but not muted (the icon is white, the bar below it is completely grey)

[pierreyy]

so i was playing a game on my windows partition when it suddenly crashed ( surprise surprise ). i had to do hold down the power button to shut it down... i tried boot back into Ubuntu... it acted a bit weird ( i used the recovery mode to get it to boot) anw when it booted into Ubuntu the backlight from the keyboard was on...

it there is anything you guys need to figure out why its working, just let me know!

i have a toshiba a665, dual boot between win7 and ubuntu 12.04

[davenation]

Hi everyone.

I'm new here and I want to install one distribution of linux on my toshiba a665 s6067 because windows got me tired of errors and crashes, I've been reading about you said of the KB and some other stuff, so, I want you to tell me or recommend which linux distribution should I install to get a nice start with the OS.

thanks in advance

[madrang]

With my Toshiba Qosmio x770 i can go to /sys/class/backlight/toshiba
In that folder there are some files that seems to be used to control the backlight. I just dont know the values i need to enable it.

[tobie.de.beer]

I got a X770 a week ago and tried about everything to get the keybord backlight and the LCD Brightness to work,

So far I found the following:

Keyboard backlight:
I can get it working as per the Bios setting by using a Win7 install disk and let it run until it require some input (choosing language etc.) and then holding the power button in for 5 sec. After that booting in linux the keybord backlight works (no Ctrl-Z though) I plan to make a partition with only the startup stuff from the install disk for that purpose.
# EDIT: and it is working: use: d:\boot\bootsect /NT60 e: and copy all the stuff from the install disk to the drive (I ommited some stuff
# noteably the Install.wim a rather huge file) ( c: running windows installation d: windows install disk e: new partition formatted to ntfs
# for this purpose) for more info on creating this, have a look at the process to create a usb install disk. I simply ran sudo update-grub
# afterward to have this in my grub menu. Now after I ran windows, I boot into this 'install disk' and hold the power switch down until it
# powers off, afterward linux have a lit keyboard....
EDIT: Windows is breaking the above setup - I guess I'll have to cary a windows install disk around

For the Screen Brightness I had to use the addon for:
nvidia-dkms
with:
echo X | sudo tee -a /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
where X is 0 to 7

The 3D stuff I could get to work but only as a addon program not as part of the Display driver (Nvidia does not support 3D on Linux and Geoforce) see: http://users.csc.calpoly.edu/~rsomers/cpe572/

More on topic....

To me it seems that somewhere in the bios the latest default setting for the OS is stored (for acpi), when windows shut down it changes these setting before it powers down, and then linux load these (powered down windows) setting come into effect agian. Thefore swiching off while windows is running leave the righ settings in the bios somewhere...

Anyone knows much about reading bios setting and storing/resoring them?

[nelsonhoover]

Bump

Toshiba 665 here too. Same problem.

[hydrox24]

The issue with the A665 Laptops still has note been fixed in 12.04 and needs to be addressed for Toshiba laptops as a whole. They're popular laptops and this is a major usability issue. If we could get a Dev in here, it's surely a relatively small job to get the keyboard back-light working but still one that has a good return on it?

[naftilos13]

I currently have a toshiba P755-11Q laptop , the combination FN+Z doesn t light up my keyboard and i have also tried booting to win7 and then holding the power button .Some times it worked for me but the next time i restarted my laptop the light was off again . a thing i should mention here is that i usually work without my battery . Recently i downloded HIRENS BOOT CD 15.2 RESTORED BY PROTEUS V1.1 , when i boot my laptop from it and tried to load MINI WINDOWS 7 from it i got errors and failed to boot so tried the last line of HIRENS main menu where it says ALTERNATIVE BOOT METHOD(GRUB4DOS).From that point i managed to load MINI WINDOWS 7 , my backlight keyboard was ON and i could control it with FN+Z . So i lighted up my keyboard and just shut down from MINI WIN 7 .Next reboot was without HIRENS so when i finally loged on to ubuntu, the keyboard was finally ON!!! If i shutdown/restart my laptop with the battery on it the keyboard backlight stays ON all the times , if the baterry or the power cable is not attached to the laptop the keyboard light goes OFF and i have to repeat the whole process.I believe this is the best solution for my needs until now.Another strange information for those of you that understand a few more things than a normal user like me is that during some restarts a sign of the power button appears on the bottom right corner of the first black screen where it suggests the pressing of F2 or F12 .When i entered bios setup with F2 i noticed that the tabs of the bios POWER MANAGEMENT & ADVANCED MENU are gray and don t give you the normal ability to change the settings , just display them. Of course when i restarted without any battery everything was normal.

[tanzantj]

I have a Toshiba satellite u945 (14'' ultrabook). I've been fighting with this same problem for a few months. Tonight I found that if I boot my Windows 7 OS into safe mode and then just shut it down once I reach the login prompt my keyboard works when I boot into Ubuntu (12.10). The hibernate workaround never worked for me but this safe mode seems to do the trick. I've tested and my success is reproducible.

Sumpin' is better than nothin'.