kpowersave resumes to wrong screen brighgness after blanking

[Sami Mäkinen]

I am using profile "powersave". After a few minutes of waiting the screen blanks. Then when touching the mouse again, screen brightness is set to 100% rather than 19% as set in "powersave" settings. 100% setting is used in "performance" profile, but I never select it. After resumin the KPowerSave status dialog does show the current profile as "powersave" even though the brightness is wrong.

To fix this I have to switch profiles or enter kpowersave configuration after each screen blank, or accept a shorter battery life.

[AlesUbu123 (ales-maver)]

I can also confirm this.
Whenever the screen on my laptop is blanked (or after waking up from suspend), the screen brightness goes to 100% after display is turned back on. Also, my "Reduce brightness" keys stop working and I have to press "Increase brightness key" first (although brightness is already at 100%), and only then I am able to reduce brightness.
More annoying bug than a really critical one. Still...

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Is this symptom still reproducible in 8.10 or 9.04?

[Sami Mäkinen (sami-makinen-helsinki)]

Yes, the issue is still present in 8.10, though behavior is a bit different.

In current up to date Kubuntu 8.10 with KDE 4.1, I can start kpowersave, and leave it running, but when I reboot it is automatically replaced by Guidance power management.

Observations:

* Go to system settings > Display, and set power management on and set all three options to 1 min. Wait for 1 min.
-> Screen shuts down, then after a few seconds blinks back on to normal visibility, and then goes black but the backlight remains on. Also the mouse cursor remains visible, although the screen is otherwise completely black. Upon moving the mouse, system restores screen. Backlight is on a level which is neither the minimum or maximum brightness, but something in between. This brightness level is independent of the brightness slider setting in Guidance.

* Quit Guidance. Go to system settings > Display, and set power management on, and set standby after 1 min, suspend after 2 mins and power off after 3 mins. Wait for 3 mins.
-> after 1 min same as above happens (screen goes fully off, then after a few seconds blinks on, and then goes black but with backlight on and mouse cursor visible).
-> after 2 mins nothing happens.
-> after 3 mins screen goes fully off, and does not come back on.

* Now after rebooting Guidance always starts up, even if a quit it just prior to rebooting. It does not ask whether it should be automatically started, like KPowerSave did.

* The "Hold"-button still works the same way it did in 8.04 / KDE 3 as well as the preinstalled Windows Vista, i.e. turns off both display and touch screen after a few seconds of delay.

[Andrew Kohlsmith (akohlsmith)]

I have the opposite problem with a recent 9.10 beta. It was working better in an earlier 9.10 beta.

I have it set to start dimming the screen after 5 minutes of inactivity. It does this very well. Now, however, when I wiggle the mouse or touch the keyboard, the screen brightness stays at whatever dim level it "worked down" to on its way to shutting off.

i.e. I work at 100% brightness. Leave it alone for a few minutes, screen starts dimming (say 50%)... wait a while longer it's now 25%... wiggle the mouse, use the keyboard, screen stays at 25% brightness. I have to manually bring it back to 100% where it'll stay until I leave the system alone for a while again.

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

KPowersave has been removed from distribution in both Ubuntu and Debian since:
- The package no longer builds, leaving us with no way to provide further updates
- Its author(s) no longer update KPowersave
- Its functionality is largely replaced in KDE4 by PowerDevil.

Unfortunately this means we will not be able to provide further bugfixes or updates to this package. Thanks for understanding.