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I've got an Asus EEE PC 1005HAB, and after upgrading to 11.04 I can no longer use Fn+F7 to turn on/off the screen backlight. The other Fn+FX keys I've tried so far all work. Is there some standard fix, or should I report this? A quick Google search didn't turn up anything.

Braiam
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l0b0
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4 Answers4

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I used a Eee PC 1005HA to confirm this. Running dmesg I get:

keyboard: can't emulate rawmode for keycode 244

The keycode refers to XF86KbdLightOnOff, so I think this is a bug.

Workaround:

  • Use xrandr -q to get the monitor's name, should be something like LVDS1.
  • Use compizconfig-settings-manager Install compizconfig-settings-manager commands plugin to set hotkeys to:
    • xrandr --output LVDS1 --off change LVDS1 with your monitors name.
    • xrandr --auto dont use output with this command, it seems to cause window glitches.
Community
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sergio91pt
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There's an alternative to turn off the backlight of the LCD whenever you want. Just type

xset dpms force off

and press enter in a terminal, or make a desktop launcher of it and attach it in the unity panel.

If you're using gnome shell then there's a gnome shell extension to attach a desktop launcher to the top panel, then with a single click u can turnoff your lcd.

If it works you can also make a keyboard shortcut for xset dpms force off

Zanna
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gunjan parashar
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An upgrade from 10.10 to 11.04 removed several packages from me. One of them was smartdimmer. It's package description is:

Nvidia Geforce 6200Go, Geforce 8, Geforce 9, and other cards contain hardware LCD brightness control. Smartdimmer allows this to be controlled through software.

Try installing it, I do not guarantee anything though.

The logs of the upgrade process can be found in /var/log/dist-upgrade, and the log for installed / removed packages in /var/log/dist-upgrade/history.log.

Lekensteyn
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  • Does smartdimmer work for cards other than Nvidia? I can't control screen brightness on my laptop with Intel card even though the brightness meter/slider can be moved up and down. – Oxwivi May 02 '11 at 11:43
  • I don't think so. Could you try manually setting the brightness level using the /sys interface? Run: cd /sys/devices/virtual/backlight/acpi_video0, followed by cat brightness max_brightness. The first number is your current brightness, the second your maximum brightness. The minimum value is 0 (zero). To change it to 3, run: echo 3 | sudo tee brightness. Please report any errors back. – Lekensteyn May 02 '11 at 11:48
  • Lekensteyn, I think because of my attempts to change brightness (i.e. lower it), the brightness output was 0. I ran the command to change it to three, and after inputting password, output of only 3 was shown. No noticeable change in brightness. – Oxwivi May 02 '11 at 12:22
  • @Oxwivi: this bug on Launchpad may be of interest for you. – Lekensteyn May 02 '11 at 12:28
  • That bug I believe is due to the kernel. – Oxwivi May 02 '11 at 13:11
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I have made a Unity launcher to turnoff the LCD. You can also try this 

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends gnome-panel
gnome-desktop-item-edit ~/Desktop/ --create-new

it will open a small window

  • in name type : turnofflcd
  • in command type : xset dpms force off

I read about making a launcher here on Ubuntu Geek

Zanna
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gunjan parashar
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