Comment 28 for bug 555122

Just to clarify: my _exact_ intstructions only apply for laptops made by HP. Also I'm using the 64 bit version of ubuntu.

@phox: You are right, if HAL isn't enabled on your system in the first place editing a HAL config file should not make any difference. In your case the problem seems to be somewhere else. Have you tried runing gnome-power-manager in verbose mode (killall gnome-power-manager && gnome-power-manager --verbose) ? Does it produce any output if you press the brighness keys?

@Sylvain: Run "lshal | grep laptop_panel.brightness_in_hardware" to check whether hardware brightness control is really set to false (it should be if you edited the 10-laptop-panel-hardware.fdi file correctly). If it is try running gnome-power-manager in verbose mode to see if it receives any brightness key events.