Arch Linux

barney

Member

Registered: 2020-12-14

Posts: 116

Problems with backlight on cheap keyboard

I have bought cheap keyboard which have backlight associated with the ScrollLock key. Keybord is working fine under Windows, but I have problems with it under Linux. lsusb gives:

 Bus 001 Device 004: ID 1a2c:2c27 China Resource Semico Co., Ltd USB Keyboard 

Pressing the ScrollLock key does not have any effect. On this forum I have found that setting the '/sys/class/leds/input2::scrolllock/brightness' enables the backlight. That is true, but the problem is that toggling the state of CapsLock, NumLock or ScrollLock disables the backlight, I must execute:

sudo sh -c 'echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/input2::scrolllock/brightness'

to enable the backlight again. My keyboard configuration is standard:

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "system-keyboard"
        MatchIsKeyboard "on"
        Option "XkbLayout" "us,mk"
        Option "XkbModel" "pc104"
        Option "XkbOptions" "grp:sclk_toggle,terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp"
EndSection

I don't know how can I suppress disabling the backlight when toggling the CapsLock, NumLock or ScrollLock.
It is interesting that I don't have this problem in Console.

barney

Member

Registered: 2020-12-14

Posts: 116

Re: Problems with backlight on cheap keyboard

I have found a solution. Instead of using:

sudo sh -c 'echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/input2::scrolllock/brithnes'

use:

 xset led 3

and everything is working fine.
Now I have question about multimedia keys (I get this with the Fn key). They work nice in X, but they return the 'null character' in Linux console. Is there a way to enable the multimedia keys in Linux console. I rarely use console, but for the shake of completeness I am asking the question.

archee

Member

Registered: 2025-05-10

Posts: 1

Re: Problems with backlight on cheap keyboard

same problem here, and i guess same keyboard!
i tried to use

sudo sh -c 'echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/input2::scrolllock/brightness'

(ik u should change the input number in the path), it works  but only while i hold the enter key, when i let off it stops lighting up, when i check into the file, it always returns to 0 even after the code changes it to 1.
about the xset led command, i wrote it but it didnt do a thing.
Please help .

Last edited by archee (2025-05-10 13:58:09)