[regression] gnome-power-manager laptop backlight not working on VAIO VGN-FSxxx

[Sunspark]

Binary package hint: gnome-power-manager

Laptop Sony VAIO VGN-FS620/W

Last working: Gutsy Beta CD

Problem: In gnome-power-manager it no longer allows the control of the brightness by either AC power or battery power.

When problem happened: Doing an update from the Beta CD to what was available on Sunday October 14th 2007. After that the screen was on it's lowest dim setting, and none of the sliders would change the brightness. It is as if the control panel is still there, but is no longer sending a signal to the right place that it used to in the beta cd.

[Nicolas Joyard (joyard-nicolas)]

Reproduced on Sony Vaio VGN-FS415S. I think this makes the bug confirmed, as our two laptops are close enough to be managed the same way.

[Nicolas Joyard (joyard-nicolas)]

Moreover I think the affected package is not gnome-power-manager, because I couldn't find any entry in /proc that enabled setting the brightness (IIRC it was something like /proc/acpi/sony/brightness in Feisty). I guess the concerned package is the kernel, could someone please confirm this ?

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

I have a sony vaio laptop also and the path for changing the brightness for me is at /sys/class/backlight/sony/ ; as a workaround i use "echo $value > /sys/class/backlight/sony/brightness" does that works for you guys? Do you have an entry regarding the laptop_panel in hal-device-manager?

[Andrew Chadwick (achadwick)]

I'm using a Vaio VGN-B3XP, and I get a Generic Backlight Device in hal-device-manager which comes up as laptop_panel and with the /sys/ directory Pedro mentioned. I can see and chat with /sys/class/backlight/sony/brightness, and pushing values into it affects my brightness. The sony_laptop and sonypi modules were loaded automatically on my system.

I also get this problem too. Hotkeys work fine; trying to configure the laptop to dim from the power preferences doesn't work at all. I'm using stock Gutsy with ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=true in /etc/default/acpi-support . My fix is to get laptop-mode to do the dirty work:

  # In /etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf
  CONTROL_BRIGHTNESS=1
  BATT_BRIGHTNESS_COMMAND="echo 4"
  LM_AC_BRIGHTNESS_COMMAND="echo 7"
  NOLM_AC_BRIGHTNESS_COMMAND="echo 7"
  BRIGHTNESS_OUTPUT="/sys/class/backlight/sony/brightness"

Pretty ugly, and it's likely to get messy when a proper fix is released and g-p-m/hal can manage it once again. Values range from 1 to 7 for my laptop. YMMV.

Under edgy and fiesty, the same problem occurred, and was due to bashisms in a hal script. See bug 65028. The workarounds for that don't work any more, naturally.

[Sunspark (sunspark)]

I asked the gf whose laptop it is to run another update tonight to see if there were any fixes committed of any sort that might have made a difference.
She did so, and went into power manager and confirmed that the sliders are working again. So, on her specific model the sliders work again.

[Sunspark (sunspark)]

Busted again. "what I did last night was that I set it to zero, rebooted, and then tried adjusting it. that worked again this morning. so that's what you can report it seems like 50% breaks it"

Slider should not require being set to zero and rebooting.

[marvman90 (fatlip)]

This affects me on Gusty.. Sometimes. Especially after leaving standby. I'm using a Sony VAIO VGN-FS215M.

[Tony Kitzky (tkitzky)]

I did a clean install with updates of Gutsy x86_64 on a new Sony Vaio VGN-NR160 laptop. Screen backlight control is non-functional from both the gnome desktop applet and the brightness applet on the launcher panel. "lsmod" show the sony-laptop module is loading. I have only a generic directory "acpi_video0" in /sys/class/backlight, nothing for "sony". Echoing values in to "brightness" does nothing. I do have an empty directory in /proc/acpi/sony if that means anything.

I am compiling kernel 2.6.23.12 now. We'll see if that does anything. Otherwise I think I'll have to drop back to a 32-bit install. I haven't tried the 32-bit live cd yet. I'll try that first.

[Andrés G. Montañez (andresmontanez)]

I have the same model - Sony Vaio VGN-NR160E - and installed Gutsy x64 and x32; all worked fine except for the backlight (didn't try dual monitor).
I tried to install the old sonypi, and so on with no success.
Didn't try new kernel; any luck with that?

Thanks.

[Luís Silva (luis)]

I have the same behavior in Hardy!

The laptop is an ASUS Z96J. Neither the slider that controls brightness in AC mode works, nor the display is set to of (DPMS off) on timeout. The light stays always on maximum...

The button shortcuts in the keyboard work nevertheless...

Everything worked before the upgrade to gnome 2.22 final...

[JoePub (joepubber)]

Just thought I would add to this. I have the same issue too with a Sony VAIO VGN-SZ3XWP, brightness works with the function keys but does not work using the sliders in gnome-power-manager. The output of gnome-power-manager can be seen below. Funny enough, it did work on a fresh install, but as soon as I installed nvidia-glx-new as opposed to nv drivers it stopped working.

The output seems to indicate that values are the same for before and after calculations so it does not do anything

removed=0, finally=1
[gpm_screensaver_powersave_idle_changed] gpm-screensaver.c:102 (13:05:29): emitting powersave-idle-changed : (1)
[powersave_idle_changed_cb] gpm-idle.c:335 (13:05:29): Received GS powesave idle changed: 1
[gpm_idle_set_mode] gpm-idle.c:98 (13:05:29): Doing a state transition: 1
[gpm_backlight_notify_system_idle_changed] gpm-backlight.c:632 (13:05:29): we were active for 57.843741s
[gpm_backlight_notify_system_idle_changed] gpm-backlight.c:635 (13:05:29): changing powersave idle status to 1
[gpm_brightness_lcd_get_hw] gpm-brightness-lcd.c:116 (13:05:29): GetBrightness returned level: 7
[gpm_backlight_brightness_evaluate_and_set] gpm-backlight.c:378 (13:05:29): 1. currently set brightness 1.000000
[gpm_backlight_brightness_evaluate_and_set] gpm-backlight.c:415 (13:05:29): 2. battery change by nan, brightness 1.000000
[gpm_backlight_brightness_evaluate_and_set] gpm-backlight.c:453 (13:05:29): 3. idle change by 0.000000, brightness 1.000000
[gpm_backlight_brightness_evaluate_and_set] gpm-backlight.c:473 (13:05:29): 4. ambient scale 1.000000, brightness 1.000000
[gpm_brightness_lcd_get_hw] gpm-brightness-lcd.c:116 (13:05:29): GetBrightness returned level: 7
[gpm_backlight_brightness_evaluate_and_set] gpm-backlight.c:481 (13:05:29): values are the same, no action
[gpm_info_event_log] gpm-info.c:594 (13:05:29): Adding 2 to the event log
[hal_device_property_modified_cb] gpm-cell.c:258 (13:05:38): udi=/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer_power_supply_battery_BAT1, key=battery.remaining_time, added=0, removed=0, finally=0
[hal_device_property_modified_cb] gpm-cell.c:258 (13:05:38): udi=/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer_power_supply_battery_BAT1, key=battery.charge_level.rate, added=0, removed=0, finally=0
[hal_device_property_modified_cb] gpm-cell.c:258 (13:05:38): udi=/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer_power_supply_battery_BAT1, key=battery.charge_level.current, added=0, removed=0, finally=0
[hal_device_property_modified_cb] gpm-cell.c:258 (13:05:38): udi=/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer_power_supply_battery_BAT1, key=battery.reporting.current, added=0, removed=0, finally=0
[hal_device_property_modified_cb] gpm-cell.c:258 (13:05:38): udi=/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer_power_supply_battery_BAT1, key=battery.reporting.rate, added=0, removed=0, finally=0
[hal_device_property_modified_cb] gpm-cell.c:258 (13:05:38): udi=/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer_power_supply_battery_BAT1, key=battery.voltage.current, added=0, removed=0, finally=1
[gpm_screensaver_powersave_idle_changed] gpm-screensaver.c:102 (13:05:40): emitting powersave-idle-changed : (0)
[powersave_idle_changed_cb] gpm-idle.c:335 (13:05:40): Re...

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

This is a really old bug (ran across it cleaning out old community wiki pages). Does anybody still have the hardware to test this with the latest version of Ubuntu?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for gnome-power-manager (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]