Dell Inspiron 1520 Function Keys LCD Brightness No Longer Work in Gutsy

[Félim Whiteley]

It functioned fine out of the box in Fiesty, but no luck in Gutsy. I'm not sure what or anything you need to troubleshoot/learn_more about this.

Thanks

[Rino Mardo (rino-mardo)]

I have Dell Inspiron 1520 with 7.10 installed (out of the box) the function keys LCD brightness control IS working fine.

[Félim Whiteley (felimwhiteley)]

This is a upgrade from Feisty, not sure if that's the issue.

[Rino Mardo (rino-mardo)]

This is what happens if you don't provide enough information.

Please describe the steps you did when you upgraded to Gutsy including any error messages, logs, dmesg output, and the likes.

[Félim Whiteley (felimwhiteley)]

Followed official Gutsy upgrade procedure, ie. via Adept Manager.

Initially the Update Manager GUI crashed, I couldn't capture any logs from this as it killed entire GUI. I had to restart it at which point it completed correctly. Then everything appeared fine. The brightness does change when I switch onto battery and is adjustable in the KDE Power Manager, so the only issue seems to be the function keys themselves.

Other error has been the fact that Audio does not work, but this is logged already at Bug ID 131133.

Attached dmesg

Apologies for initial short bug entry. Thanks

[Félim Whiteley (felimwhiteley)]

Update for this. I've booted and tested the function keys for LCD brightness during the bootsplash and they work. Once X/KDE has loaded it no longer works, so it appears to be something in KDE not allowing it too work.

[Joel Oliver (joelol75)]

Confirming with Inspiron 9400. Kubuntu fiesty to gutsy broke CD rom eject and brightness controls. The fix in bug 111943 works https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kubuntu-default-settings/+bug/111943

[Andrew Starr-Bochicchio (andrewsomething)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. There is some further information that might help track down the problem. Could you please follow the "How to file" procedure described at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingHal and attach the requested files here?

[Félim Whiteley (felimwhiteley)]

Ok attaching requested files. To note I did 2 thins, first pressed the fn+Up arrow to increase brightness then I pressed fn+down arrow to decrease it so both will be in file. Thanks for you help Andrew.

[Félim Whiteley (felimwhiteley)]

This seems to be the relevant bit, as I said first I tried (once only) brightness up, then brightness down (again one keypress only). And as I've said before it works fine during bootsplash, seems to stop once X/KDE are up and running. Very odd.

08:24:00.493 [D] hald_dbus.c:2950: udi=/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/platform_i8042_i8042_KBD_port_logicaldev_input
[769]: 08:24:00.495 [D] addon-acpi.c:192: event is 'video LCD 00000086 00000000
'
[769]: 08:24:00.585 [D] addon-acpi.c:192: event is 'video LCD 00000086 00000000
'
08:24:00.593 [D] hald_dbus.c:2950: udi=/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/platform_i8042_i8042_KBD_port_logicaldev_input
08:24:05.212 [D] hald_dbus.c:2950: udi=/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/platform_i8042_i8042_KBD_port_logicaldev_input
[769]: 08:24:05.219 [D] addon-acpi.c:192: event is 'video LCD 00000087 00000000
'
[769]: 08:24:05.271 [D] addon-acpi.c:192: event is 'video LCD 00000087 00000000
'
08:24:05.279 [D] hald_dbus.c:2950: udi=/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/platform_i8042_i8042_KBD_port_logicaldev_input

[Félim Whiteley (felimwhiteley)]

As of an upgrade from Gutsy to Hardy this has been resolved.

[Andrew Starr-Bochicchio (andrewsomething)]

Thanks for all your follow ups. Glad to hear that your issue was resolved.