[intrepid] screen brightness resets to 100% on reboot

[Rocko]

Binary package hint: hal

Every time I boot Intrepid it resets the screen brightness to full. The Hardy alphas used to do this but it was fixed for the release; now it seems to have regressed for Intrepid.

Dell XPS 1530
Intrepid, kernel 2.6.27-3 amd64
hal 0.5.11-3~ubuntu8

lspci gives:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 PCI Express Root Port (rev 0c)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8600M GT (rev a1)
03:09.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05)
03:09.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)
03:09.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev 12)
03:09.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)
03:09.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev ff)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 12)
0b:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN Network Connection (rev 61)

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

I've found a setting in System / Prefs / Power Management that might be causing this: under 'Display', there's a setting for 'Set display brightness to: x%' for AC (and also for battery).

This isn't present in the Hardy version of Power Management. I think in Intrepid it is being read and applied at login instead of just when the power source changes from battery to AC.

[Dirk (rptq)]

I am using the current Intrepid beta on a brand new HP 6930p with Intel 4500MGD graphics. On this machine, the power dependent brightness seems to get set only at boot time.

But I also have problems with Fn F9/F10 which is supposed to change the brightness but does nothing. However, putting the display to sleep after x min idle time does work.

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

That's odd - on my PC, the display doesn't go to sleep after x min idle time! I opened a different bug for that one.

On my PC, the display brightness is reset at boot and possibly also after resume. It also often resets when I tell update-manager to install updates.

[Grzegorz Galezowski (spectral)]

Hi,
I've got the same issue, also with intel graphic chipset. If there's any system info I can provide to ease the resolution of this issue, please let me know.

[Grzegorz Galezowski (spectral)]

I've noticed that you've attached lspci output, so here's mine.

[laltopi (gdghare)]

I have the same issue - Intel chip set. The display brightness goes to 100% even when I log out and log back in - without reboot.

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

If you modify the setting in System / Prefs / Power Management 'Set Display Brightness to' to a value other than 100%, does the brightness get set to this value on logging in? I think it's a feature rather than a bug.

[Steve Beattie (sbeattie)]

Marking against gnome-power-manager since that appears to be where the issue is located, though this may merely be an intended change of behavior.

[Grzegorz Galezowski (spectral)]

Rocko, in my settings the 'Set Display Brightness to' is set to 1% for AC and it still goes to 100% every time I reboot my computer. The first jump to 100% seems to occur as early as the GRUB menu, which seems quite strange.

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

Grzegorz, that doesn't sound like my issue at all - my brightness is reset when I start X (which happens whether I reboot the entire PC or just re-login), long after the grub boot menu. It seems unlikely that grub is (deliberately) doing anything to your screen brightness - is it possible that your PC BIOS is resetting the brightness? What PC are you using?

[Grzegorz Galezowski (spectral)]

Rocko, I've reinvestigated the case. Seems like I mistakenly reset the computer without setting manually brightness down before the reboot (I made a reboot twice) and I though that the brightness reset was done at the GRUB stage, while in reality it was reset during previous boot. Seems like, the first appearance of Ubuntu logo and boot progress bar seems to reset the brightness for the first time. When I turn it down, it gets reset again at logon screen.

Sorry for causing any confusion.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Could you try to reproduce the same with Ubuntu 9.04? Thanks in advance.

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

Um... it's an unexpected feature of Gnome since 2.24? in Hardy. So I guess it's invalid.

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

When I said Hardy, of course I meant to say Intrepid.

[Grzegorz Galezowski (spectral)]

Does it mean that this bug shall not be fixed? It's still an issue in Intrepid...