screen brightness adjustment causes mouse/keyboard input to stop (possibly dell laptop specific)

[Sean-O]

when using the brightness up/down macros built into my dell laptop, (that worked fine in hardy) the screen brightness will adjust but once adjusted the keyboard and mouse will stop accepting input.

[Magnus S (magnuss)]

Thanks for reporting this. Please attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log and /var/log/syslog files to this bug report after the bug has been reproduced.

Also, post the output from the following command:
* lspci -vvnn >> ~/296902_lspci-vvnn

This will create a file called 296902_lspci-vvnn in your home directory, please attach that one too.

Thanks in advance.
//magnus

[markb (mark-blakeney)]

Happens for me as well with intrepid on my dell 640m laptop. The dimmer bar window stays up in the middle of my screen. If I do a "killall nautilus" then dimmer disappears and keyboard and mouse come back. Very bad bug this one.

The screen gets dimmed very quickly when operating on battery. Far quicker than the 15 mins it is supposed to be (probably another bug). Of course when I try and adjust it back I get the present bug.

[Patrick Kilgore (patrick-kilgore)]

Reproduced on a Dell Inspiron 6000, FGLRX driver, Intrepid 8.10 x86
Relevant logs are attached.

-Give me a second to disable fglrx and try to reproduce, see if we can't narrow this down a wee bit. As such, I'm going to leave the importance undecided for now.

[Patrick Kilgore (patrick-kilgore)]

For, well the first time ever a graphical problem I've had _isn't_ fglrx's fault. Disabling it does nothing to solve the problem. Here's how I reproduced (This is a VERY stock installation), I haven't messed with any of the core system defaults except the installation of fglrx.

1. Login
2. Change brightness using Fn + Up/Down (corresponds to raising/lowering the brightness on a dell inspiron keyboard.)
3. I am now no longer able to perform keyboard input.

HOWEVER, I have some other strange symptoms.
1. My mouse cursor still works, and can click to close programs, highlight text, ect.. However when I try to use the mouse to interact with gnome, funny stuff happens. I can't use menus (applications, places, system, logout) nor can I right click to bring up any context menus like I can in other programs.
2. Cntr + Backspace (restart gnome) fixes the problem, and after I log in I regain full keyboard/mouse functionality.

Since this has a fairly severe impact, on what I am assuming based on the above to be Dell laptop owners only at the moment, I'm escalating this bug to high importance. If anyone else encounters this bug (please someone test on another brand laptop!) please help us out by performing the steps posted above by Magnus S and letting us know the brand of your laptop.

Thanks in advance for helping make Ubuntu better!

[Patrick Kilgore (patrick-kilgore)]

Just ran through some basic debugging with gnome--power-manager and no dice. Looking more and more like x.org's problem.

[Aman Thakral (aman-thakral)]

I've got an old Dell 5160, exact same issues as above. I can "fix" the problem by going into the virtual console (ctrl + alt + f2), logging in, then exiting (using the "exit" command). My log file is attached.

[Chris (chrisseal-uk)]

I have the same problem on my Dell Inspiron 1300 with Ubuntu 8.10, this problem happens in Kernel 2.6.27-7.16
Kernel 2.6.27-8.17 fixes the problem, but in the recently released 2.6.27-9.19 the problem has reappeared.

[Patrick Kilgore (patrick-kilgore)]

Added as a possible kernel bug after Chris' information.

[nkravi (nkravithegreat)]

I am using Dell Inspiron 6000, I starting to get this exact issue after upgrading from Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10. Additional to this, I notice the screen brightness sometimes automatically increases on its own. And my keyboard input get disabled once I try to reduce the brightness. The workaround I usually do to get it back to normal is:
1) Press [Alt] + [Ctrl] + F1
2) Followed by [Alt] + [Ctrl] + F7

Attached are the logs requested by magnus

[Patrick Kilgore (patrick-kilgore)]

Thanks for attaching the logs, however, can you please attach them as
separate text files? This makes them much easier for a developer to examine
and find a solution since they can view them in the web browser.

Thanks for taking the time to help make Ubuntu better.