Brightness reset to max when starting/restarting Xorg or waking from sleep

[JDP]

On the Dapper Flight 5 LiveCD an iBook 2 rev. 2 (600MHz 16VRAM) the machine will go into sleep and wake up. A great improvement over crashing! however the screen is always set back to full brightness. It also happens when starting/restarting Xorg.

Also, when adjusting the brightness I can use Fn-F1 to turn it all the way down and to off. Then it requiers two presses of Fn-F2 to turn it back on, but pressing Fn-F1 once more to turn it back down a notch leaves it on, and a second turn it off again. So, there's an error of some sort in counting where the level of bright turing on and off is, and also in leaving the brightness where it was last at when booting or coming from sleep. i'm assuming that X.org is just resting the video hardware everytime it comes back up and that's blowing away the brightness setting.

I searched Launchpad/Malone for similar bugs in Dapper and didn't find any that looked similar.

[JDP (k-m34)]

I forgot to post a link to the forum post about this and other Flight 5 issues: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=867294&postcount=43

[Fabio Massimo Di Nitto (fabbione)]

Can you please update the ati driver from the archive and see if it is still a problem? Several bug fixes have been done that are not in flight Cd's yet.

Fabio

[JDP (k-m34)]

The wake from sleep brightness issue may be wrong. I tried before I updated and couldn't reproduce it. The issue with restarting the Xserver is there. After the load-splash for Gnome had gone and just after the upper and lower bars appear the brightness is faded back up to full. I turned it back down to minimal then I ran "sudo apt-get update" and then "sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-driver-ati". When it was finished I restarted the Xserver with "Ctrl-Opt-Del" and saw the same thing happen. It also still has the problem with pressing Fn-F2 twice to turn the backlight back on and the rest of that issue.

[Keywan Tonekaboni (prometoys)]

I have also the problem on an iBook G4 12" 1.33Ghz from June last year.

If the iBook wakeup from sleep, the display is set back to full brighness. If I push Fn-F1 (darker) then it recover the correct brightnes.

I have the newest ati driver (dist-upgrade few hours ago)

[John Steele Scott (toojays)]

I can confirm this on an iBook G4 1GHz. It's most annoying for me because I usually have the iBook connected to an external monitor, and I want the LCD panel to stay off most of the time. But when I resume from sleep, or when the screensaver comes on, the backlight is turned on unnecessarily.

One thing I have figured out is that this is being done behind pbbuttonsd's back. I say this because the command "pbbcmd config lcdbrightness 0" does not provide the quick workaround I would expect. I speculate that this is because pbbuttonsd thinks lcd brightness is already at 0, and so ignores the request. If I run the command as "pbbcmd config lcdbrightness 1; pbbcmd config lcdbrightness 0" then I get the effect I want (turning off the backlight).

[Raid (pdecarlos)]

Something similar occurs with an hp nc6000 (Ati Mobility Radeon 9600 M10).
The brightness controls fn+f9 and fn+f10 dont works since xorg starts.

[Eljay (eljay-ubuntu)]

I do confirm that it occurs also on my HP nc6000. The problem disappears when DRI is disabled.

[Jame (lliyan)]

Same problem in Thinkpad T21. And I wish there is a regulatory bar displayed like the sound bar while press the button.

[John Steele Scott (toojays)]

This is still an issue in Edgy.

[robertpolson (callidusfox)]

Kubuntu Edgy 6.10 KDE 3.5.6

I have the same problem, brightness resets to maximum.

Asus G1 Laptop.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Please test 7.10beta or newer and report back if it is fixed or not.

[John Steele Scott (toojays)]

Nope, this bug still exists in gutsy.

Timo, do you know what part of X could be causing this? I'm just not sure that the radeon driver is the best package to own this bug. On these iBook/Powerbook systems, the backlight is controlled via the PMU.

This bug might be better resolved if the issue with resume was fixed in hal (which already has code to control the backlight), and the issue with the screensaver was fixed in gnome-screensaver or gnome-power-manager (whichever of these has ultimate responsibility for blanking the screen).

[lostangel78 (lostangel78)]

Try typing the following command in a terminal:

xgamma -gamma 0.75

If that doesn't work you need to install xgamma from the repos.

I have posted my own solution here on setting it up:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4168042#post4168042

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

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? Can you try with latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Since there's been no response in 3 months, closing bug as expired.