ThinkPad SL series multiple hotkeys not functioning

[Michael Meese]

Binary package hint: hotkey-setup

Hey guys!

Last Saturday I got my brandnew Lenovo Thinkpad SL500 NRJ9AGE and installed Intrepid Ibex (8.10) 64bit.
The problems concerning the hotkeys are still up2date for this modell. I read that with hotkey-setup 0.1.28ubuntu7 the problems should be fixed, but unfortunately not for SL500.

The main problem is the brightness of the display. The hotkeys works very bad if I try to change the brightness.
The first thing is, that the function is inverted. The second point, the procedure of changing the brightness is very inaccurate. The background gets dark an returns than in an brighter or smother light. Its a very strong flickering of the display.
If I disconnect AC, the display gets on battery brighter and returning to AC it gets darker again. Cazy thing... Also when I log into Ubuntu with my user. First in the gdm, the display is shining like the sun. After I logged it gets darker again... GRML!!!

I tested following keys:

Key: Works?
------------------------------------------------
Lock Screen = no
Battery status = no
Sleep = yes
Wifi/RF kill = no
Switch displays = yes
Hibernate = no (but I use a encrypted swap-partition)
Brightness up = yes, but inverted
Brightness down = yes, but inverted
Volume up = no
Volume down = no
Mute = no
Multimedia Keys = no
Display Zoom = no

The are additional problems with the fingerprint sensor and the webcam. They dont work, but I think thats another construction side.

An additional hint:
If I do "sudo modprobe tinkpad_acpi", I get this message:

FATAL: Error inserting thinkpad_acpi
(/lib/modules/2.6.27-7-generic/kernel/drivers/misc/thinkpad_acpi.ko): No
such device

I would be so glad, if some can get me some advice. Its not very funny, if your brand new toy will not work in top condition.

Greetings!
Michael

[Michael Meese (pelennor)]

Ok... After one week of investigation I found the reason why it doesnt work correct...

http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/pipermail/linux-thinkpad/2008-October/044992.html

It isnt a bug. The incompatibel fimrware is the reason why I wont work.

[Wouter Stomp (wouterstomp-deactivatedaccount)]

The order of the brightness levels in the thinkpad bios is reversed, which is allowed by the specification, but it needs to be patched in the kernel. There is another bug open about this. I will look it up and mark this one as a duplicate.

[Wouter Stomp (wouterstomp-deactivatedaccount)]

The inversed brightness is bug 301524. I will leave this one open for the other hotkeys which are not functioning and edit the bug title accordingly.

[Amol (amolmodi)]

Unsurprisingly, the problem with the hotkeys also occur on my SL300, which is running Jaunty Alpha 6. I don't even get a response for them from xev.

[Johannes Hessellund (osos)]

Same problem here with SL500 running Jaunty.

Some code should fix this.
http://github.com/tetromino/lenovo-sl-laptop/tree/master

Unfortunately I don't know how!

[Johannes Hessellund (osos)]

This might be a dublicate of bug #351586 !?

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Marking this bug as a duplicate of bug #351586, as suggested. If you still find that these hotkeys do not work when the appropriate lenovo sl module is loaded, please open a new task on the udev-extras package, which is responsible for hotkey mappings going forward.