Is there a way to get backlight control on the Asus UL30Vt under Fedora 15+KDE4?

[marko]

I was hoping that the broken backlight control on Fedora 14 / KDE4 would be fixed in Fedora 15 but the KDE plasma control in the battery widget is still broken (the use of the brightness Fn keys or the widget slider shows the level bar moving but the brightness doesn't change). Any tips for this? The brightness just sits at maximum all the time. This is the Asus UL30Vt which has both nvidia and intel hardware. This is not Optimus graphics though.

[roelj]

I've had the same problems. You could try the open source video driver (I'm currently using it and I have no problems with it).
Or you could try a different kernel (which worked for me on Fedora 14).

I haven't seen this problem on Fedora 15.

Maybe someone on the KDE forums has more (and better) options.

[marko]

It is the open source driver, I did the basic default installation and didn't go to nvidia to get the blob driver nor did I use the rpmfusion nvidia package

[roelj]

What kernel are you using and what version of KDE are you on?
And what version of the driver do you have?

I'm on kernel 2.6.38.6-27.fc15.x86_64 and KDE version 4.6.3.
My video driver is: 2.1 Mesa 7.11-devel (mesa*experimental).

[marko]

I guess mine are:
kernel: 2.6.38.6-27.fc15.x86_64
OpenGL version: Mesa 2.11 7.11 devel

and the drivers I found by looking at the lspci -k values for VGA:

lspci -k |grep -A 3 VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
        Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1af2
        Kernel driver in use: i915
        Kernel modules: i915
--
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GT218 [GeForce G210M] (rev a2)
        Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1af2
        Kernel driver in use: nouveau
        Kernel modules: nouveau, nvidiafb

The Asus UL30Vt has two video cards, I think it's actually running on the Intel side for the X server and not the nvidia card because the LoadModule in the Xorg.0.log file shows as "intel". Unfortunately this means the laptop is wasting power with that unused card.

[roelj]

There's only one thing I know that could help sometimes.
Rename the .kde and .config directory in your home folder or create a new user and try if it works.

If type "sysinfo:/" in konqueror you will get the information on the KDE version, your kernel and graphics driver that KDE is using.

[nicof15]

Hello
I have an UL80VT, which is almost the same notebook.
Executing the following command from a terminal changes the screen brightness, at least when the intel card is running (needs root privileges):

setpci -s 00:02.0 F4.B=XX

where XX is an hexadecimal number from 00 (LCD off) to FF (max brightness).

I found this tip in a guide for ubuntu (which I can't find anymore) that also provided a customized script to execute that command automatically when using Fn keys. That didn't work on F14 and I never tried in F15.

Does anyone know how to tell the gnome/KDE power manager (or whatever backend is actually responsible) to use that command instead of whatever they normally use?

[marko]

Yeah, I think that might do for the brightness control (using setpci) but I'll still need something like asus-switcharoo

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...SUS-Switcheroo

to actually save the power of the unused card. I think I'll really just hold on until Kernel 2.6.40, aka Kernel 3.0 comes out which has the good kernel code put in for multiple cards.

UPDATE -- I've been reading about another option called acpi_call, it might work to turn off my other card too.

[marko]

acpi_call works, it turns off the nvidia card on the UL30Vt