Adjusting Dell backlight steals X keyboard focus and uses 100% CPU

[Hinrik Örn Sigurðsson]

My problem is twofold.

First, when I adjust my laptop screen's backlight (Fn+Up/Down), the 'hald-addon-dell-backlight' starts taking 100% CPU until I kill it. After killing it, subsequent adjustments to the backlight do not cause this, for obvious reasons.

Secondly, every time I adjust the backlight, regardless of whether 'hald-addon-dell-backlight' is running, I lose keyboard focus in X. Alt+Tab and such things do still work, but there's no way to input text from the keyboard to any window. A workaround for this is to switch to a console (e.g. Ctrl+Alt+F1) and back to X again (Ctrl+Alt+F7), which restores the keyboard focus.

[Hinrik Örn Sigurðsson (hinrik-sig)]

I forgot to mention that I'm running Intrepid on a Dell Inspiron 8600.

[WJ Dawson (dawsonwj)]

I also have this problem with my Inspiron 8600. I'm running the official release of Intrepid, installed as an upgrade from Hardy. My machine has nVidia GeForce FX Go 5200 graphics, in case that helps.

[Linard Verstraete (linardv)]

To make things easier, I splitted this bug report up in 2 separated reports.

Bug #292778 takes care of the "regardless of whether 'hald-addon-dell-backlight' is running".
Bug #285323 takes care of the rest you reported.