sony-vaio-z-series team mailing list archive

[Raphael Gradenwitz <raphael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Michal,

Am Freitag, den 06.11.2009, 11:01 +0100 schrieb Michal Kvasnicka:
> after the clean install of the Ubuntu karmic 9.10 x64 on may VAIO
> VGN-Z41XD and after the exactly performed steps from the Tutorial
> (http://global-social.net/tiki-view_blog.php?blogId=3) I have got the
> following problem:
> 
> Under stamina mode (INTEL graphics) works everything OK but when I
> switch to the speed mode (NVIDIA graphics) the F5 and F6 buttoms does
> not change brightness, only the animated logo showed at right up
> corner. Everything else works OK, too.
> 
> Could you help me to solve this problem?


Good. It shows, that you did everything right!

The problem is, that nvidia (not only on Sony) uses different acpi
methods to change the brightness than the intel. That is a known issue.
Nvidia Geforce 6200Go, Geforce 8, Geforce 9, and other cards contain
hardware LCD brightness control.

the binary

    /usr/bin/smartdimmer

allows this to be controlled through software:

Simple run
 
    sudo apt-get smartdimmer

to install it.

It must be run as root (crazy! that sucks, I know) but you can add it to
the sudoers file as command that works without a password:

To do so, edit the sudoers file (with visudo (!!!)), search this part:

# User privilege specification
root	ALL=(ALL) ALL

and attach this:

<user> ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/smartdimmer

where <user> must be replaced with the username which does not need to
enter a password for this command.

I have made two starters to the pannel with some commands like

sudo smartdimmer -s 50

and

sudo smartdimmer -s 100

to sett the backlight on 50% or 100 percent with a cklick of the mouse.

I was working on a better solution to hang this on the Buttons F5 and F6
but I did it not yet finish it because the acpi support al the time was
changing during the last time and I do not feel pain while it does not
work ;-)

But I hope, this workaround with smartdimmer helps you.

Regards,

Raphael