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I have a Dell XPS 13 Developer edition (the one that comes with Ubuntu). The keyboard backlight dims after about a minute of keyboard inactivity (no key presses). I'd like to extend this timeout or even make it permanent.
I've looked across the internet and thought I came close when I looked in /sys/devices/platform/dell-laptop and /sys/class/leds/phy0-led, but nothing worked so far.
A way of setting the backlight through the command line would probably suffice, as I could just create a script to bump up the light every once in a while.
Note that I can control the light via Fn+F6, and it turns on automatically when I press a key on the built-in keyboard.
Thanks in advance!
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Note that I can control the light via Fn+F6, and it turns on automatically when I press a key on the built-in keyboard.
Then you could use something like this:
while :; do
xdotool key shift;
sleep 55;
done;
Have you tried xset to control the light? Check dmesg or journalctl just after it dims/switches off.
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I see nothing related to it in either dmesg og journalctl (tried as root as regular user). For some reason the Fn+F6 combination isn't recognized by xev (like the volume function keys are), so I have no idea what key id it is.
Is it possible that it is simply a hardwired configuration from Dell that can't be changed?
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It might be a non-standard signal Fn+F6 is sending through the keyboards controller. You should be able to find technical documentation on the keyboard[s controller], it should be mentioned there. You could also monitor events with 'udevadm monitor -kp', but I doubt it will be registered. Maybe it is worth the time to take a look at pyalienfx, the lights might be handled in a similar way. So I assume, my suggestion does not work for you? I would 'find /sys/{class,devices} -type f' before and after lights were switched off, and compare them.
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I got this solved by using libsmbios.
There was a bug in /usr/share/smbios-utils/cli.py so I had to wrap the sys.stdout.write(c) call on line 111 in a try/except.
Then I got all the bios tokens listed using
sudo smbios-token-ctl -d
and found that the Keyboard Illumination token had id 0x01e2.
Finally I was able to set the backlight permanently on with
sudo smbios-token-ctl -i 0x01e2 --set-string true
Silence, at last.
Thanks to http://xps13-9333.appspot.com
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Would you please post exactly how you wrapped sys.stdout.write(c) call on line 111 in a try/except. Thanks.
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Would you please post exactly how you wrapped sys.stdout.write(c) call on line 111 in a try/except. Thanks.
From line 111 in /usr/share/smbios-utils/cli.py, change:
sys.stdout.write(c)
chars_printed = chars_printed + 1
if chars_printed > line_len:
sys.stdout.write("\n")
chars_printed=index
sys.stdout.write(" "*indent)
To:
try :
sys.stdout.write(c)
except :
pass
chars_printed = chars_printed + 1
if chars_printed > line_len:
sys.stdout.write("\n")
chars_printed=index
sys.stdout.write(" "*indent)
However, I am using an XPS 13 9343 (not the developer edition) and I do not have a token for Keyboard Illumination (On). All I have is 0x01e1 - Keyboard Illumination (Off).
Last edited by rjs02 (2015-10-13 16:28:58)
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