Monitor Brightness goes up and down by itself

[titto]

I've recently installed Kubuntu Karmic 9.10 from new. I'm not completely new to Linux, tough.
Couldn't say when this bug started exactly, but it probably came with this latest release.
I own a MSI-Wind netbook and i've previously been using Ubuntu 8.10 and Kubuntu 8.10 & 9.04 and never experienced this trouble.

The problem is the following:
whether i use the fn keys or the slider in the power management settings panel in order to adjust the brightness, it starts going up and down by itself (note that in either case i just press/change it by one step) and never stops.

-> As in previous releases (as well as this does) the gui brightness indicator shows up and indicates correctly the actual brightness strength. It just goes up and down forever. Just to give you an idea, it changes brightness intensity about 10 times per second and never calms down. (The symptom is just as if i got fun pressing madly the up and down fn keys, while i'm effectively pressing them just one time).

The only way i've discovered to stop this madness is to reboot the whole machine.

NOTE: i've discovered that fn keys work right in the pre-grub and grub loading times, and that in that 'short' time i can adjust brightness without having the problem. Once i log in the system i get no chance to press brghtness fn keys once and not experiencing the automatically up&down problem.

What can i do to remedy to this? It must be something simple, i reckon (because in previously releases it worked right).

Tell me what you need and i'll give you :P
Thanks for your future help :D

(PS: i'm italian, but i used english to get to a wider slice of people. So if you're italian too, don't get mad with english and just speak your language if you want.)

[WeatherGod (ben-v-root)]

titto, Thank you for your bug report. To get started, what model/brand laptop are you using?

[titto (tiziano-flati)]

First of all, thanks for your ready reply. ^^

It is a netbook from MSI. To see the productor page: http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=proddesc&maincat_no=135&cat2_no=582&prod_no=1474.

For a short summary:

Processor: Intel® Atom™ N270 1.6GHz Processor
Chipset : Intel® 945GSE+ICH7M
RAM: 1GB (SDRAM DDR2 667)
Monitor: 8.9″ 1024×600 TFT LCD Panel
Battery: Li-Ion 3 cells
Graphic Card : GPU UMA Shared (can't say the size, but i think it doesn't matter)

If you need some further details, tell me.

[titto (tiziano-flati)]

Ah, i forgot to fully explain the model....
It's a MSI Wind U90 Series. The technical features stay the same, tough!
Thanks,
hope to hear from you soon...

[ha8ut (ha8ut)]

i have the same problem on multi boot msi wind u100. have installed osx, w7, and 9.1 in this order.

[dmsspb (dms-spb)]

I've the same problem too. Display brightness "flashing".
msi u100.
Upgraded 2010-01-25 from ubuntu 9.04.

[titto (tiziano-flati)]

I've recently discovered that i can avoid the problem simply logging out. So:
1) I'm logged in and press just once a brightness fn keys
2) I think: "Oh no, not again! -.- "
3) Close all the applications i have and simply log out the system
4) In the "welcome login display" where i'm supposed to insert my name and my password there i can change the monitor brightness wothout experiencing the problem. So one press -> one change, multiple presses -> multiple changes accordingly to what i asked for (and note: no up&down problem!) .

One more:
If i'm logged in and just close the monitor (as if i closed the whole system and went to bed XD ) the monitor blocks (as i directly chose in the system settings). So if anyone comes around and finds the pc on and opens the monitor, finds it blocked waiting for a password to be inserted. In THIS VERY PHASE i can change without any problem the brightness with the fn keys.
So:
1) I'm logged in and press just once a brightness fn keys
2) I think: "Oh no, not again! -.- "
3) I close the monitor down.
4) I reopen it
5) It asks me for entering my password (but i just wait some seconds)
6) I take advantage of the particular moment for adjusting the brightness intensity without seeing the up&down thing
7) Put the password in and im' back at work!

Hope to help you with this information...

I suppose that actually it doesn't depend on the function keys or some strange thing, it must be something that is activated once the Desktop environment is run ( => when i close the monitor down the system continues running its applications normally, it doesn't freeze or suspend to ram or disk, it just switches the monitor off and nothing more, so all of the processes that were running before i closed the monitor keep running in the meanwhile and after that. Just to be precise).

Hope to hear from you,
thanks

[dmsspb (dms-spb)]

titto:
thank's a lot! Your solution is very helpfull for me.
My way to resolve this problem: lock screen and relock after that.

[dmsspb (dms-spb)]

Found solution (works for GNOME only):

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-power-manager/+bug/415023?comments=all

message #210

1. Get the file
2. Run
3. Reboot

[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

Hi titto,

This bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ .

If it remains an issue, could you run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux 490272

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

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[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

This bug report was marked as Incomplete and has not had any updated comments for quite some time. As a result this bug is being closed. Please reopen if this is still an issue in the current Ubuntu release http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download . Also, please be sure to provide any requested information that may have been missing. To reopen the bug, click on the current status under the Status column and change the status back to "New". Thanks.

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