Comment 46 for bug 207473

I've got the same hardware as Sympy, and exactly the same experience. Way back in late feisty, this was one percentage amt (approx 10%) was given to one button press. AFAIK this is gpm. Early gutsy, it managed get the steps about right, but it was still using percentages rather than hardware. Since gutsy has been finalized, this happens. Four events per one press causes four steps (approx. 60%, if it matters...) instead of one step, such as when 'video' module is missing.

The reason I go through all that is that I believe that the problem is seated soley in hal (in our case). I'm not quite sure what you mean by "the current proper state of things" but AFAIK this is not entirely correct behavior: Whatever is controlling brightness is working properly, faithfully changing brightness four times, because the one button generates four events.

For conveinance (and possible comparison), here's my lshal -m output:

--snip--

10:45:58.670: platform_i8042_i8042_KBD_port_logicaldev_input condition ButtonPressed = brightness-up
10:45:58.670: computer_logicaldev_input_1 condition ButtonPressed = brightness-up
10:45:58.670: computer_logicaldev_input condition ButtonPressed = brightness-up
10:45:58.903: platform_i8042_i8042_KBD_port_logicaldev_input condition ButtonPressed = brightness-up

--un snip--

Some things here that seem to be of possible interest...

Lines 1-3: occur at the same exact (down to millisecond) time
Lines 2 and 3: slightly different logicaldev_input thing... two hardware pieces (unlikely) or two sources for the same event?
Line 4: Same as Line 1, but approx. 250 milliseconds later

Could each line beginning with "platform" be tied to one of the lines beginning with "computer"?