FN keys not working on vaio VGN-FS215E

[James Dupin]

VAIO VGN-FS215E
CPU intel celeron M370 1.50 GHz
Graphics Intel 915GM with up to 128 MB
RAM 2x256 MB
WLAN 802.11 b/g
SCREEN 15.4 WXGA X-black LCD
Optical Double layer DVD+-RW
French keyboard

Normal install (daily release 01-09-06)
admin is install created user

FN keys not working on vaio VGN-FS215E (out of the box).
Unplugging the power adpator does nothing either (this late function works with suse 10 but fn keys are not)

[James Dupin (james.dupin)]

kern.log shows problem (I think) on sonypi

[James Dupin (james.dupin)]

using the hotkey trick from http://users.skynet.be/thomasvst/linux-on-laptop/
enables fn keys for sound and brightness. does not correct the brightness changes when the power adpator is unplugged.
Other fn keys are still not working.

[Ralf Mörler (mobang-deactivatedaccount)]

Fn Keys worked in Breezy out of the box.
See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/SamsungP35 for Details.

Now no Fn Keys and special keys are working any more.

Ralf

[Paolo Borelli (pborelli)]

To get Fn keys working on the vaio FS searies you need to patch the sony_acpi driver adding

ony_acpi_values[] = {
...
 {
  .name = "fnkey",
  .acpiget = "GHKE",
  .debug = 0,
 },
...
}

which will create a /proc/acpi/sony/fnkey entry

and then need a small daemon or something like that that polls the file. I am not sure if there is a standard program for this kind of thing (I recall it was discussed on the HAL list, but I don't think it has been done)

http://developer.berlios.de/projects/fsfn/ seems to have this small daemon, but I haven't bothered testing it. I tested out the above kernel modification and it works, the proc files assumes the values 1, 2, 4, etc every time a Fn+Key combination is pressed.

[Timothy Smith (tas50)]

Can you test this on Dapper 6.06.1 or Edgy Beta 1 so we can see if the bug still exists?

[Paolo Borelli (pborelli)]

It looks like the kernel patch is included in edgy.

I dunno if the corresponding userspace[1] is included in the distro... for sure it isn't on by default since the keys do not work here.

[1] either the ugly standalone daemon or a proper solution integrated with hal, gnome-power-manager etc

[James Dupin (james.dupin)]

I installed edgy and still get the same no working fnkeys.

I checked the presence of the kernel patch and it is there indeed as /proc/acpi/sony/fnkey entry exists and ls /proc/acpi/sony gives brightness brightness_default fnkey as output.

Now installing fsfn does not work for me as I have a problem of setkeycodes e077 that I am unable to resolve myself. (basically pressing the fn key creates the problem and I don't know how to find the code for this key - I tried xev and showkey but then my knowledge/comprehension stops here as those 2 commands do nothing.

I am willing to give ssh admin access to a developper to my machine for him/her to check whatever he/she wants.

If interested let me know by mail with a means to check if you are part of the ubuntu dev/bug team. As I leave in france, I can leave my laptop running all day/night long for someone to come in. This is a brand new install and besides fsfn program nothing else has been added.

I have another problem but I don't under what to file it. with acpi on I have wifi working but no cdrom, with acpi=off I have cdrom but no wifi.

James

[Matt Sicker (jvz)]

Still an issue in Feisty as of today (12.02.07). I'm on a Vaio VGN FS something or other, so it's not specific to that model (215E). In fact, as Paolo pointed out, the patch seems to be for Sony Vaios in general.

[Peggy Kutyla (peggy-kutyla)]

Vaio VGN FS115 with Feisty.

I have had to recompile the sony_acpi module in order to get /proc/acpi/sony/fnkey. I've got the source from http://www.gagme.com/greg/linux/vaiofj-fc5.php

NB : Description in linux-source is wrong while sony_acpi manage brightness & sound & perhaps hibernation

[James Dupin (james.dupin)]

Thank you Peggy, at last some FN keys work on my FS215E and Feisty.

attached file contains sony_acpi.tar.gz from developer.berlios.de and fsfn-1.1-take2.tar.gz from http://www.gagme.com/greg/linux/vaiofj-fc5.php

needed dev files: libasound2-dev and libxosd-dev

for sony_acpi : sudo make install

for fsfn : ./configure and sudo make install
                         cp debian/fsfn /etc/init.d
                         sudo update-rc.d fsfn defaults

create a minimalist /etc/fsfn.conf with
BRT_HACK_FJS=1
ALSA_NAME=Front

 add to system/pref/session"/"startup programs": fsfn -o

mute, volume +/-, brightness +/- work now... Victory...

Certainly will have to fiddle one day with /etc/fsfn.conf for hibernation, zoom and screen switching but tomorrow is another day;

[Bill Coutinho (bill-coutinho)]

On a Sony Vaio VGN-N230N, Fn-F2 (mute), Fn-F3 and Fn-F4 (sound volume up/down) keys are working, but not the others (Fn-F5/Fn-F6 brightness up/down, Fn-F7 LCD/monitor switch, Fn-F12 suspend).

dmesg reports some errors, though:

[ 210.460000] sonypi command failed at drivers/char/sonypi.c : sonypi_call1 (line 646)
[ 210.500000] sonypi command failed at drivers/char/sonypi.c : sonypi_call2 (line 657)
[ 210.544000] sonypi command failed at drivers/char/sonypi.c : sonypi_call2 (line 659)
[ 210.584000] sonypi command failed at drivers/char/sonypi.c : sonypi_call1 (line 646)

I can set brightness up/down with the script "/etc/acpi/sonybright.sh", but power manager doesn't seem to affect the brightness (I set 70% brightness when running on batteries, but it does not change).

[Matt Sicker (jvz)]

OK, fsfn doesn't work at all for this situation (just crashes as soon as I try to use the Fn key). Any other solutions? The state of support for Sony VAIO VGN notebooks in Ubuntu is *abysmal* compared to pretty much every other laptop I have tried Ubuntu and Kubuntu on...

[jasebond007 (jaison007)]

I have found this on ebay, followed and solved my problem!!! hope this will help you also

Sony Vaio Hotkeys, Screen Brightness & PowerPanel
by: choppershaw( 2683)
23 out of 23 people found this guide helpful.
Guide viewed: 2434 times Tags: Sony | Vaio | Hotkeys | Brightness | Powerpanel

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SONY VAIO LAPTOP 'HOTKEYS'
WHY AM I WRITING THIS GUIDE?
I am writing this guide to help people looking for information on setting up the 'Hotkeys' on various Sony Vaio laptops. The 'Hotkeys' are secondary functions that are symbolised in blue on your laptop keyboard across various F-keys. The 'Hotkeys' are accessed in conjunction with the FN key. These functions control basic but essential settings such as screen brightness, volume levels, monitor out etc etc.

I recently needed to setup the hotkeys on a Sony Vaio Z505AP laptop following a fresh install. I spent quite a time searching for information & drivers across various websites & forums. It quickly became apparent that a lot of people were having problems with the same task so I felt writing this guide would be helpful to others & save them alot of time.

The process will vary from each Vaio model but this should hopefully save you a lot of time and make the task easier. For the two Vaio models (Z505AP & Z600LEK) I recently set the Hotkeys up on, the process is similar and the theory the same.

WHAT TO INSTALL?
To get the Hotkeys working your Vaio laptop requires THREE different components/sets of software installed, these are:

'Hotkey drivers'
'Sony Shared Library'
'Sony Utils'

Once you install these three components & restart your Vaio laptop your Hotkeys should be working. These are all unobtrusive files that will only enhance your Vaio machine however alternatively you can install Sony's Powerpanel or Batteryscope programs to perform the similar features.

Most these files are written for specific Vaio models however there is some overlapping and files from similar Vaio models may work with your own laptop.

WHERE TO FIND THESE FILES?
There are various online resources relating to this topic however the best place to find these files is the one below.

ftp://ftp.vaio-link.com/pub/VAIO/ORIGINAL

Using that site, find your model number & download the relevant 'Utilities' file. You might also find useful the link below, which may help with this task and/or others (including RAM upgrade advice etc)

http://support.vaio.sony.co.uk

It took many reinstalls to work out the order and what programmes needed to be installed to get the hotkeys working & I purposefully took hours doing so, noting each step I made so this guide could be written and save time for others.

[Almer S. Tigelaar (almer)]

Can someone retest this with Intrepid Ibex (or the Jaunty Jackalope Alpha)? I think it is fixed, but am not sure for the FS model mentioned (as such there should be no need anymore for fsfn or somesuch).

[Peggy Kutyla (peggy-kutyla)]

Fn keys not working at all on a VGN-FS115M with Intrepid
No event are detected while following all methods in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/HotkeyResearch

Wath a pity ! sony_acpi + fsfn was working well

[Peggy Kutyla (peggy-kutyla)]

Just upgrading to Jaunty.
Fnkey still not working. Same tests as before.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Reassigning to udev-extras, the hotkey-setup package is now obsolete and not responsible for fixing these issues.

If you have the laptop listed in the description, please follow the steps described at
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Hotkeys/Troubleshooting> to help us identify where in the chain the hotkey events are going missing.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

[Peggy Kutyla (peggy-kutyla)]

Just upgrading to Lucid and function keys still not working.
Test with https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Hotkeys/Troubleshooting
Launch /etc/acpi/mutebtn.sh as user doesn't work BUT work great when being launched with sudo
Same for volupbtn.sh and voldownbtn.sh

Brightness can be set using the the xfce4-power-manager-plugins
I don't know how to test in a different manner

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.

Please exercise the steps at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Hotkeys/Troubleshooting to determine at which level your hotkey problems occur, and attach the collected information. Most probably the keys will produce an unknown or wrong key code with the "keymap" tool, in which case you need to follow /usr/share/doc/udev/README.keymap.txt.gz to determine the scan code - key code mapping for the broken/missing keys.

Thank you!

[Peggy Kutyla (peggy-kutyla)]

Hi,
You have all the informations in messages #19 to #23.
I just forget to specify that i neither have outputs using xev nor using acpi_listen

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I saw those comments, but they don't provide the actually interesting information. As long as the scancodes aren't recognized and it doesn't produce correct key codes, then xev can't receive anything. You have to use the keymap tool to figure out the missing scan codes. acpi_listen is rather uninteresting here as well, it's only relevant on some models which have broken kernel drivers (usually the kernel translates hotkey related ACPI events into input events).

[Peggy Kutyla (peggy-kutyla)]

I have a sony VGN-FS115M.
According to /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/95-keymap.rules, i should use module-sony witch seem to be ok

findkeyboards give me :
AT keyboard: input/event4
module: input/event6

sudo /lib/udev/keymap -i input/event6 doesn't output anything so i could not check if the key code are wrong or not.

cat /sys/class/dmi/id/sys_vendor
Sony Corporation
cat /sys/class/dmi/id/product_name
VGN-FS115M

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

> sudo /lib/udev/keymap -i input/event6 doesn't output anything

Hm, that is weird, and will most probably be a kernel bug. However, just to be sure that we tested everything, could you please run it against input/event4 (the main keyboard) as well? If that doesn't react to Fn keypresses either, then as a last resort you might try all input devices from input/event0 up to the point where it says "no such device".

[Peggy Kutyla (peggy-kutyla)]

input/event4 react as expected for the main keyboard but nothing for the Fn keys.
input/event0 to input/event10 react like i were typing : printing letters, no keycode, no reaction with Fn keys

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Thanks for checking. Reassigning to the kernel then, which needs to produce events.

[Samuel Hangouët (samuel-hangouet)]

This bug still seem to be with ubuntu 10.10 (maverick amd64 on VGN-SR19VN), no event seem to be triggered by FN+F5/FN+F6.

Never-the-less, I tried ubuntu 10.10 x86 (ie 32 bit version), and could not reproduced the problem, so it might be a 64bit issue...

[Chris Van Hoof (vanhoof)]

I'm curious to know if this is still an on-going issue on natty 32 or 64 bit builds?

[Samuel Hangouët (samuel-hangouet)]

On natty 64-bit, the problem seems to be fixed.

Thanks

[Peggy Kutyla (peggy-kutyla)]

Sony vaio FS115M ; Natty 32 bit
I've just check under Gnome. Nothing seems to be recognize

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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