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A really strange phenomenon is plaguing me [innocently working on my laptop] for the last two days. The brightness keeps resetting periodically (probably every 1-2 minutes) to the highest possible value. My brightness keys don't work, either.

My nvidia-smi is

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 465.27       Driver Version: 465.27       CUDA Version: 11.3     |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                               |                      |               MIG M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce ...  Off  | 00000000:01:00.0  On |                  N/A |
| N/A   49C    P8     3W /  N/A |    455MiB /  3911MiB |      8%      Default |
|                               |                      |                  N/A |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                  |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                  GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                   Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A    121351      G   /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg                 59MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A    121608      G   /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg                235MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A    121736      G   /usr/bin/gnome-shell               34MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A    122281      G   ...AAAAAAAA== --shared-files       18MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A    122706      G   ...AAAAAAAAA= --shared-files       95MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A    130318      G   /usr/bin/nvidia-settings            0MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

I have tried multiple fixes. I've set the "EnableBrightnessControl" to true, tried editing a lot of config files, run xrandr --output DP-4 --brightness 0.3 (even run it periodically to set it back to 0.3 using the watch command, that makes it flicker when the reset happens and really destroys my eyes). I've also tried using nvidia x-server to set the brightness and contrast myself. But it always resets within a matter of minutes.

Any help will be massively appreciated. I can add any logs or outputs based on comments asking for them.

My GPU: GTX 1650

Output of cat /etc/X11/default-display-manager is /usr/sbin/gdm3

EDIT: One interesting point is that it stopped last night after I disabled night light!

William R. Ebenezer
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  • Are you using an MSI notebook? – matigo May 19 '21 at 14:33
  • @matigo No, it's a Lenovo Y540. I know the MSI problem, apparently need to do some quirk.config.. – William R. Ebenezer May 19 '21 at 14:36
  • It's odd that your brightness is changing on its own. Have you seen this answer? I cannot find any reports of screen brightness changing of its own accord unless you have an automatic brightness setting that's overcorrecting your xrandr setting ... – matigo May 19 '21 at 14:43
  • @matigo For some reason, the brightness control keys aren't working at all.. I had added that line quite a while ago. The keys, when pressed, usually bring up some sort of indicator for the brightness level. But even that doesn't appear... And yes, it is quite strange that something keeps resetting it when I don't have autobrightness enabled. – William R. Ebenezer May 19 '21 at 15:25
  • Is it possible that your "brightness-up" key is stuck, forcing the brightness to increase? This could also explain why your "brightness-lower" key is not being recognized (i.e. it is being overridden by the other key). This could happen if debris or liquid have entered the key mechanism. – Enterprise May 19 '21 at 18:52
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    @PJSingh The keys are fine, apparently.. just checked on keyboardtester.com – William R. Ebenezer May 20 '21 at 01:40
  • Firstly you state you are "[innocently working on my laptop]" but that can't be proven :). Seriously though there are reported problems when Red Shift and Night Light are used concurrently. Would that be your case? Also you don't want to use xrandr --output DP-4 --brightness 0.3 because that is software brightness. You want to use hardware brightness on a laptop. – WinEunuuchs2Unix May 20 '21 at 02:02
  • @WinEunuuchs2Unix XD. Well, I am using only Night Light, I can't find a "red shift" option in my settings (I ran a search) though. And yes, I know xrandr isn't a good idea, but my hardware brightness seems to be stuck at max for now, since the keys don't work. – William R. Ebenezer May 20 '21 at 05:02

0 Answers0