Can not set backlight brightness on my Samsung NC10 in karmic

Attached you will find the output of hal-device. No backlight mentioned anywhere:-)

Found the fix:

The NC10 needs a special kernel module to make the display backlight work. The stuff can be found here:
https://launchpad.net/~voria/+archive/ppa

It would rock if the nc10-backlight packages from there could get integrated into the karmic kernel!

I can confirm this. This wasn't so in Jaunty.

Reassigning to the kernel since the fix involves a special kernel module.

I had this problem as well running karmic Beta, after I updated the samsung NC10 bios to version 11CA the problem was gone. So just to recap before bios update the brightness controls on the NC10 netbook did not work after the 11CA update the brightness controls work 100%

I hope this helps someone.

P.S. I did not make use of the special kernel module.

I just marked 2 other reports as a duplicate of this one. In one of the reports, the user had it working one day, and not working the next, so this is an odd one.

Also, this user noticed that it didn't work in either Kubuntu or Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

I have applied the karmic "nc-10 backlight" and "scripts" packages from below:
https://launchpad.net/~voria/+archive/ppa
and for the first time ever everything now works on my NC10.
I'm using a very old BIOS btw - I've never been brave enough to try to update it through Linux :-p

Perhaps these packages could be added to the repository?

However, 2 other issues worth mentioning:

The "acpi-support" patch from this archive produces a weird effect in UNR launcher where there are huge delays in the screen reacting to cursor movements and the fading in/out of different screens (once a program is running, however, it works at normal speeds)

This effect also occured on the couple of occasions that the backlight worked without any patches. So there must be something slightly astray in the repository's acpi-support package.

Setting brightness works (again) now, at least in KDE.

BTW: Hotkeys still don't work for me (I didn't install special modules) but that's not a topic of this bug report.

So that people can find this thread, can someone please correct the typo in the thread? It should be "Samsung NC10" *not* "sharp NC10" :)

I can confirm this. This wasn't so in Jaunty.
And it's not "Sharp" but "Samsung"

Why this bug does not appear in the karmic's bug ?

I can confirm this bug with karmic rc1.
It's a regression because in jaunty it worked very well.

Can please some one correct the title and add "[Karmic Regression]" to it.

According to the bug #397617, you must upgrade the bios to 11CA.
So, it fix KMS, qnd karmic is using KMS...

It works for me now.

No, not working for me. BIOS is up to date.

Not sure what my Bios is (my NC10 is 2 months old), but the screen brightness was working in Jaunty and NOT in Karmic. Have just found this page and followed the info on the link https://launchpad.net/~voria/+archive/ppa and the brightness control is now working again!

many thanks

if it's any help, updating to the latest 11C BIOS from the samsung web-site cured this problem for me as well. the voria ppa works as well, but has to be updated with every kernel update. the function key scripts package is very useful tho :)

how do i update the bios?

Are you dual booting?

Rachael
www.rlb.tel

On 2 Nov 2009, at 22:51, Pete24v <email address hidden> wrote:

> how do i update the bios?
>
> --
> Can not set backlight brightness on my Samsung NC10 in karmic
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/438763
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of a duplicate bug.
>
> Status in “linux” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: kdebase
>
> This issue might be related to #311436, but it is not the same one.
>
> I can not set the display brightness on my samsung NC10 in KDE. The
> slider of powerdevil is always in the lowest possible position, even
> while the display brightness is at its maximum. Moving the slider
> does not change anything.
>
> The BIOS is set to manual brightness control.
>
> xbacklight does also fail:
>> xbacklight -dec 10
> No outputs have backlight property
>
> Any ideas?
>
> I am using karmic with the following versions:
> kdebase-bin 4:4.3.1-0ubuntu1
> linux-image-2.6.31-11-generic 2.6.31-11.36
> xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.8.1-1ubuntu2
> xserver-xorg 1:7.4+3ubuntu5
> xserver-xorg-core 2:1.6.3-1ubuntu7
>
> which is what aptitude claims to be current at this time.

no, there was no reason to keep XP on there as Jaunty worked perfect. it will be a slight hassle adding the voria ppa every time the kernel gets updated. I may go back to Jaunty if this is the case

I can confirm that after the brightness keys did not work on Samsung NC10 and Karmic. This was not the case in Jaunty.
I can also confirm that upgrading the BIOS to the latest version resolves the issue.
As some have concerns about upgrading the BIOS without having a winXP installation they can take a look at the how-to on Voira's blog (the same person who created the wonderful script that maps all Fn keys) at http://www.voria.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=248

The problem disappears if you update your bios.