Brightness Control on-screen display won't disappear

[Metzelmaennchen]

Binary package hint: acpi

Hello Supporters ;)
I've got a little problem with the on-screen display of the brightness control in intrepid 8.10... it won't vanish :(
Also it doesn't update, it shows always the lowest state. Then the desktop isn't responding.
Can click but doesn't show an action. I think the mouse is caputered in the on-screen display ?

Can release it by switching to the console. Then it returns immediatly to the desktop. I'm not pressing strg-alt-f7 to get back. It does it automatically.
Then the on-screen disappears and I can use the desktop again.
The funny things... the brightness itself changes like normal.
And the volume control works also perfectly.

Laptop is an
Dell Computer Corporation
Latitude X300
A10

with an Intel 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device.
Hitting the brigtness keys reports following
FN + Brightness up = XF86MonBrightnessUp
FN + Brightness Down = XF86MonBrightnessDown

[Metzelmaennchen (admin-dasmetzelmaennchen)]

Update 2008-10-27
As with todays update status, the on-screen display still won't disappear.
But when hitting the buttons fast, it updates. Hitting the key one time and waiting a few seconds the on-screen display brightness bar grows to the max or min value depending on decreasing/increasing brightness.

[Andrew Duckworth (termitime)]

Same problem here on a Dell Vostro 1400 with an Nvidia GeForce 8400M GS card. The problem occurred when I plugged in the power supply, prompting the display to change to maximum brightness. The brightness can still be altered by the brightness hotkeys, but the brightness display does not disappear from the screen. Since it is always on top of other windows, it is an obstacle to working on this laptop. Attempting to add the brightness applet to the panel while this display is on the screen also fails silently. Killing the gnome-power-manager process results in the display disappearing from the screen, and the brightness applet appears in the panel. When this process is restarted the brightness display functions normally.

[drieteenmeeuw (drieteenmeeuw)]

Same here on a Dell XPS M1330 with up-to-date Ubuntu 8.10 after fiddling with power management settings (hdparm stuff). The brightness applet (using mouse) works fine, but through the Fn-keys the display dims all the way down (if not hitting up fast). ctrl+F1 and then back to ctrl7 works fine.

[Andrew Paprocki (andrew-ishiboo)]

There is a kernel bug. The drivers/input/atkbd.c file has a quirk in it for Dell laptops which needed to be expanded to cover more models. It was changed initially to match any laptop manufactured by "Dell Inc.", but this then broke ones manufactured by "Dell Computer Corporation". So you either don't have the original fix, or you have the first patch and not the second one. (See Bug #285323)

I posted links to both kernel patches needed to Bug # 308594.