Comment 20 for bug 882254

@Matt Miller:

The shebang in the rc.local script reads "#!/bin/bash -e", where the "-e" means that the script will immediately stop if any command in the script fails. The fact that file 2 did not appear on your desktop means that there was a problem with your "xbacklight" command.

Some playing around shows that rc.local runs pretty early on compared to other things when the system is booting. It's completely possible that you're trying to run "xbacklight" too early (e.g., the X server probably hadn't even started yet) and it had failed as a result.

Try putting a short pause before you run that command; do this by adding the line "sleep 30" before the line where you're trying to dim the screen. This tells the machine to wait 30 seconds (or whatever amount of time you want) before moving on to the next line of the script. I'm willing to bet that this will fix the problem that you're having, as well as Lindsey334's and Chad William's.