Brightness keys don't work in Dell Inspiron 14R N4010 with Intel Graphics

English Hardware
1

I just installed opensuse 12.2 with Gnome on my Dell Inspiron 14R N4010 laptop and found that the brightness keys were’nt working. With the help of the forum member martin_helm I found that it can be changed by running

echo <desired-brightness-value> > /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness

But then I have to do this every time I boot up. After referring to some of the forum threads with intel graphics, I tried adding acpi_osi=Linux and acpi_backlight=vendor to the bootloader line and then updated grub2 but it didn’t make any difference. xbacklight was also not helping…
my

hwinfo --gfxcard

is

09: PCI 02.0: 0300 VGA compatible controller (VGA)              
  [Created at pci.319]
  Unique ID: _Znp.TfExTsk1yK7
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0
  SysFS BusID: 0000:00:02.0
  Hardware Class: graphics card
  Model: "Intel Arrandale Integrated Graphics Controller"
  Vendor: pci 0x8086 "Intel Corporation"
  Device: pci 0x0046 "Arrandale Integrated Graphics Controller"
  SubVendor: pci 0x1028 "Dell"
  SubDevice: pci 0x0456 
  Revision: 0x18
  Driver: "i915"
  Driver Modules: "drm"
  Memory Range: 0xf0000000-0xf03fffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
  Memory Range: 0xd0000000-0xdfffffff (ro,non-prefetchable)
  I/O Ports: 0x1800-0x1807 (rw)
  IRQ: 41 (217366 events)
  I/O Ports: 0x3c0-0x3df (rw)
  Module Alias: "pci:v00008086d00000046sv00001028sd00000456bc03sc00i00"
  Driver Info #0:
    Driver Status: i915 is active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe i915"
  Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown

Primary display adapter: #9

and


/sbin/lspci -nnk | grep VGA -A 2

is

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:0046] (rev 18)
    Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0456]
    Kernel driver in use: i915

What should I do to make my brightness key change the laptop brightness?
Brightness keys were working perfectly in 12.1 version.

2

Did you add the line in the following way?

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor"

Usually it works …

3

I had already tried that but it wasn’t working. Anyways I found this decent trick systemd-using-after-local-script-opensuse by forum member jdmcdaniel3 through which I can set an initial brightness value and I think that’s all I wanted. Thanks for replying! :slight_smile: and thanks **jdmcdaniel3 **for a decent workaround! :slight_smile:

4

On 09/07/2012 03:26 AM, batbhai wrote:
>
> PiElle;2484330 Wrote:
>> Did you add the line in the following way?
>>>
> Code:
> --------------------
> > > GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“quiet splash acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor”
> --------------------
>>>
>> Usually it works …
> I had already tried that but it wasn’t working. Anyways I found this
> decent trick ‘systemd-using-after-local-script-opensuse’
> (http://tinyurl.com/6r8hxpd) by forum member jdmcdaniel3 through which
> I can set an initial brightness value and I think that’s all I wanted.
> Thanks for replying! :slight_smile: and thanks *jdmcdaniel3 *for a decent
> workaround! :slight_smile:

I have requested that a service to start after.local, or an equivalent feature,
be a part of systemd for 12.3. There was some resistance due to the fact that
there is “no after with systemd”, but I think the point is getting across. In
any case, the script that James wrote works very well.