Brightness hotkeys problem on Dell Inspiron 2200

[Pablo]

Hello, I found a problem trying to change the brightness of my laptop Dell Inspiron 2200 on Intrepid Ibex using brightness hotkeys (all hotkeys seem to work properly except the brightness hotkeys).

When I press these hotkeys, the screen brightness changes correctly, but the brightness dialog appears with a "progress bar" that goes to the maximum or minimum value, no matter how many times I press the corresponding hotkey. After that, the dialog stays visible for a long time (or it simply stays "forever") and locks the keyboard until I change current terminal with ctrl-alt-FX and return to graphical terminal.

These hotkeys were working properly on 8.04, and I upgraded to 8.10 from the Internet (not a fresh install, only upgraded).
I have the latest BIOS for Inspiron 2200. I have read about related bugs in other models. In power manager options, I have unchecked the option "dim screen when idle" in ac configuration (this was a possible reason in other models having the same or a smilar problem). I tried also removing xorg.conf configuration file, the problem persists.

Brightness hotkeys in Inspiron are Fn+UpArrow or Fn+DownArrow.

Thank you for your help!

[Pablo (piaranda)]

This problem can also be found in LiveCD version.

[ilikethetrees (timothy-rourke)]

I'm having the same problem myself. The ctrl-alt-FX solution works for me, but is pretty annoying.

[Pablo (piaranda)]

I upgraded to the latest Intrepid Ibex packages that appeared yesterday...

Now the progress bar works correctly, but keyborad locking is still present.

[Marc_dm (mdemaillard)]

Also affected on : Inspiron 9400

Problems :
The "pop-up" notification stays forever on top of all windows till ctrl-alt-FX trick
The gnome interface is partly locked while the notification stays up : by this i mean
- most mouse interaction with the gnome panels is blocked (no starting paplication through buttons, highlight of menus but no display or acess to menu context)
- keyboard is mainly locked : ctrl-alt-FX still works, but only reset the display instead of going to the selected terminal

Whereas following functions work
- The brightness setting through Fn+Up or Fn+Down works (brightness setup + progress bar displaying actual state)
- the mouse is free
- mouse interaction with desktop icons OK
- mouse interaction with already launched applications is OK

problem may be linked to gnome-power-manager as the brightness setting is part of it --> bug linked

data on my system :
Linux 2.6.27-9-generic #1 SMP Thu Nov 20 21:57:00 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux
gnome-power-manager version : 2.24.0-0ubuntu8.1

[Marc_dm (mdemaillard)]

additional infos from 2 duplicate :

Bug #310437 and Bug #310852
also occuring with Dell Inspiron 9300 and Samsung E152

[Marc_dm (mdemaillard)]

strongly related problem : from Bug #281651

and retested on my configuration :
while a menu from a gnome desktop bar is open, using the brightness hotkey will :
- correctly modify the brightness setting
- but NOT show the notification and the progress bar

when closing the described menu afterwards, the brightness notification bar shows up, and i end up in the same locked situation as described 2 posts up. --> for this reason i mark the Bug #281651 also as duplicate of this one

The problem seems mainly to come from the way gnome-power-manager handles this notification, and that it hangs on it afterwards..

[RobertWiblin (robertwiblin)]

Also having this problem on my Inspiron 6000.

Appears to be a dupe of: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/intrepid/+source/linux/+bug/285323