HOWTO - Fix your laptops brightness function keys operating properly in 8.04 Hardy

[Gorgoth]

Works nicely on a Gateway MT6840. Thanks

[scathmandra]

Doesn't work on the Dell Inspiron 1501--at least, not mine.

*sigh* I'm never gonna get this brightness issue solved...

[Red.Rabbit]

Tested on my Gateway M-6843 and works perfectly. Thanks a lot.

[rekado]

None of the workarounds mentioned worked for my notebook (Haier A61). I can write to the brightness file (in IGD instead of VGA) but the brightness will not change. The brightness can only be changed before booting Linux from GRUB.
Booting without ACPI support also fixes that - but you are losing so much more for just making the brightness work...

[Tsunami713]

used it on my ibm t40 it didint work TT.TT

[skippuff54]

i fixed brightness on a toshiba satellite laptop by using gconf editor

gksudo gconf -editor

then going to /apps/gnome-power-manager/backlight and set everything to 100

thatś how i fixed it. after i did that, i found out i could also add a brightness meter to the panel

right click on panel> add to panel> brightness applet

[Zdravko]

I have an Acer Aspire 5715z and the brightness keys do function. However, each time Ubuntu starts with lowered brightness level and I have to increase it Any ideas?

[kmself]

A couple of notes.

The script could be a lot shorter and simpler. The sample below shows code to step the brightness down by a value of 10 from the current value with a floor check of 0.

The specific file in which the brightness values are adjusted seems to move around a bit. I've abstracted this to an environment variable (BRIGHTFILE). You may have to search through /proc/acpi/video to find various files named 'brightness' and toss values at them to see what actually controls behavior. Code below is for a Lenovo T61.

#!/bin/bash

BRIGHTFILE=/proc/acpi/video/VID1/LCD0/brightness
CURRENT=$(awk '$1 == "current:" {print $2}' $BRIGHTFILE )
echo "Current: $CURRENT"

NEW=$(( CURRENT - 10 ))
if [ $NEW -lt 0 ]; then NEW=0; fi

echo -n "$NEW > $BRIGHTFILE"

[bazu]

Dosen`t work at fujitsu siemens amilo p 3553

[odysseusjak]

Worked on my Gateway M-6843. Thanks a lot!