Brightness control does not work with Toshiba Portege M100

[Darshaka Pathirana]

Binary package hint: acpi-support

Hi!

I tried to adjust the brightness on my Toshiba Portege M100 by pressing Fn + F6/F7. Unfortunately nothing happened.

"toshiba_acpi" is loaded and "acpi_listen" gives me the following on pressing Fn + F6/F7:

# acpi_listen
hkey VALD 00000000 00000140
hkey VALD 00000001 00000140
hkey VALD 00000000 00000141
hkey VALD 00000001 00000141

Running "acpid -d" gives me the following output by pressing Fn + F6/F7:

# acpid -d
acpid: received event "hkey VALD 00000000 00000140"
acpid: rule from 4077[0:0] matched
acpid: notifying client 4077[0:0]
acpid: rule from 4021[105:106] matched
acpid: notifying client 4021[105:106]
acpid: 2 total rules matched
acpid: completed event "hkey VALD 00000000 00000140"
acpid: received event "hkey VALD 00000001 00000140"
acpid: rule from 4077[0:0] matched
acpid: notifying client 4077[0:0]
acpid: rule from 4021[105:106] matched
acpid: notifying client 4021[105:106]
acpid: rule from /etc/acpi/events/tosh-video_brightnessdown matched
acpid: executing action "/etc/acpi/video_brightnessdown.sh"
BEGIN HANDLER MESSAGES
END HANDLER MESSAGES
acpid: action exited with status 0
acpid: 3 total rules matched
acpid: completed event "hkey VALD 00000001 00000140"
acpid: received event "hkey VALD 00000000 00000141"
acpid: rule from 4077[0:0] matched
acpid: notifying client 4077[0:0]
acpid: rule from 4021[105:106] matched
acpid: notifying client 4021[105:106]
acpid: 2 total rules matched
acpid: completed event "hkey VALD 00000000 00000141"
acpid: received event "hkey VALD 00000001 00000141"
acpid: rule from 4077[0:0] matched
acpid: notifying client 4077[0:0]
acpid: rule from 4021[105:106] matched
acpid: notifying client 4021[105:106]
acpid: 2 total rules matched
acpid: completed event "hkey VALD 00000001 00000141"

So my first guess was to add the keycode in "/etc/acpi/events" but my first dry run with:

# /etc/acpi/video_brightnessdown.sh

or

# /etc/acpi/video_brightnessup.sh

had no effect.

Btw: changing the brightness with something like:

% echo 'brightness: 1' > /proc/acpi/toshiba/lcd

works but "Power Management Brightness Applet" does not get notified by that change. In contrast changing the brightness with the applet is very coarse. Instead of 8 brightness-levels it is only able to set three levels (0, 3 and 7).

Nevertheless the main goal is to get the function keys running. Any clues?

# uname -a
Linux antares 2.6.28-13-generic #45-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jun 30 19:49:51 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

# lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 9.04
Release: 9.04

# apt-cache policy acpi-support
acpi-support:
  Installed: 0.121
  Candidate: 0.121
  Version table:
 *** 0.121 0
        500 http://at.archive.ubuntu.com jaunty/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Thank you for maintaining!

Greetings,
 - Darsha

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

What is the /etc/acpi/events/tosh-video_brightnessdown shown in this acpid output? This is not part of the acpi-support package in jaunty, and the /etc/acpi/video_brightnessdown.sh it points at is obsolete and being phased out.

The correct fix for this bug is for the toshiba kernel module to generate a key event using the kernel input layer. Can you follow https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Hotkeys/Troubleshooting to verify whether the kernel is outputting a key event, and if not, can you check whether this is fixed in the 2.6.31 kernel in karmic?

[Darshaka Pathirana (dpat)]

On 15.07.2009 06:58, Steve Langasek wrote:
> What is the /etc/acpi/events/tosh-video_brightnessdown shown in this
> acpid output? This is not part of the acpi-support package in jaunty,
> and the /etc/acpi/video_brightnessdown.sh it points at is obsolete and
> being phased out.

Argl! Sorry, I've sent you the output after my
"tosh-video_brightnessdown" tests (which should actually fire up
"video_brightnessdown.sh")...

Please ignore these two lines I will send you the correct output as
soon as I get to the notebook again (if you need them). You should
get an idea about what is going on though...

> The correct fix for this bug is for the toshiba kernel module to
> generate a key event using the kernel input layer. Can you follow
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Hotkeys/Troubleshooting to verify whether the
> kernel is outputting a key event, and if not, can you check whether this
> is fixed in the 2.6.31 kernel in karmic?

Thanks for the link! I will have a look at it.
To double check again: Installing the 2.6.31 kernel is enough? (I
had no intension on upgrading to karmic.)

THX && HAND,
 - Darsha

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 08:14:16AM -0000, Darshaka Pathirana wrote:
> > The correct fix for this bug is for the toshiba kernel module to
> > generate a key event using the kernel input layer. Can you follow
> > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Hotkeys/Troubleshooting to verify whether the
> > kernel is outputting a key event, and if not, can you check whether this
> > is fixed in the 2.6.31 kernel in karmic?

> Thanks for the link! I will have a look at it.
> To double check again: Installing the 2.6.31 kernel is enough? (I
> had no intension on upgrading to karmic.)

Yes, you should be able to install the 2.6.31 kernel package from karmic on
jaunty, and this should be sufficient for testing on this bug. If it's
easier for you, a test with the upstream 2.6.31 kernel should also tell us
everything we need to know.

--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
<email address hidden> <email address hidden>

[Darshaka Pathirana (dpat)]

On 07/15/2009 11:15 AM, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 08:14:16AM -0000, Darshaka Pathirana wrote:
>>> The correct fix for this bug is for the toshiba kernel module to
>>> generate a key event using the kernel input layer. Can you follow
>>> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Hotkeys/Troubleshooting to verify whether the
>>> kernel is outputting a key event, and if not, can you check whether this
>>> is fixed in the 2.6.31 kernel in karmic?
>
>> Thanks for the link! I will have a look at it.
>> To double check again: Installing the 2.6.31 kernel is enough? (I
>> had no intension on upgrading to karmic.)
>
> Yes, you should be able to install the 2.6.31 kernel package from karmic on
> jaunty, and this should be sufficient for testing on this bug. If it's
> easier for you, a test with the upstream 2.6.31 kernel should also tell us
> everything we need to know.

Ok. I installed the karmic kernel 2.6.31-3-generic but I am very
sorry to say that the kernel were not able to boot. Not even in the
recovery mode!

It feels like the X-Server gets started but the screen keeps blank
(with some kind of backlight). There must be a severe problem with
the kernel (and my notebook) but I ran out of ideas to debug the
problem (as the boot output blanks away too fast, ALT+CTRL+F1 had no
effect and the /var/log/syslog got corrupt after the restart).

Maybe I can ssh into the machine but for that I need a second
machine first...

Any other clues for me of what I can do?

Greetings,
 - Darsha

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Reassigning this to a more appropriate package, since acpi-support should actually have nothing to do with handling this hotkey (I /think/ hal is still taking care of brightness controls, even in karmic).

For the problem you're experiencing booting the karmic kernel, I strongly recommend opening a new bug report against the linux package about that if you see that the problem is still present with the karmic beta.

[Shang Wu (shangwu)]

The Toshiba M5 seems to suffer from similar issue. We have found the solutions here[1], perhaps it could be used for the M100 as well.

@Steve, can you take a look at the script and see if it is possible to make it available in Lucid?

Thanks,

[1] brightness keys not working on Toshiba M5 laptop:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hal/+bug/512785

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[komputes (komputes)]

We have received another confirmation of this issue in 12.04 (unable to to dim screen on a Toshiba laptop) on a TOSHIBA PORTEGE M780 (PPM78U-00G00D). Affects software dimming (under Brightness and Lock) and keyboard-based brightness functionality.

I have reassigned package from hal to acpi-support as hal is no longer used in Precise.

[Atheg (hoganaj)]

I am facing this issue. Thanks.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

This was already assigned /away/ from acpi-support as explained in comment #5. acpi-support doesn't handle this. Reassigning to upower, which I think is the only desktop component that deals with brightness keys; if it's not a upower problem then I guess it's a kernel problem.

[madbiologist (me-again)]

This might be fixed in the upcoming upstream 3.20 kernel - see http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1502.2/02418.html