Sony Vaio and lcd brightness (and Fn keys in general)

mandos · 2006-01-23 05:42:54

hello world

i'm using arch for some time now, but i still consider myself a newbie in the linux world
recently i bought a sony vaio laptop, but as everything that carries the SONY logo there is no info about it... anywhere!

i got rid of the windows system and installed archlinux
everything seems to be fine (haven't tried suspend and hibernate yer) i have a system that i can work and that can easily be maintened

now comes the problem, and part of it is quite a trouble
vaio laptops have some assignments to the Fkeys if they are pressed along with the Fn key
the lcd brightness can be changed (in windows) by pressing Fn+F5/F6
i wanted to do the same in arch, for saving battery (and my eyes) but no luck until now

everywhere on the net people talk about the sonypi module, just an hour ago I found that the VGN series supports changing the brightness through the SONY_ACPI module (which i can't manage to install)
i have a VGN-B3VP laptop

i tried many things, but since i am no experienced user I was sure that i was doing something wrong
to make sure that linux does support the Fn keys in vaio laptops I booted with an ubuntu 5.10 live cd, and everything worked
i was able to change the volume and the brightness (and had an OSD in gnome for those changes!!)

but i don't want to use ubuntu or debian, i really like archlinux and i wan't to try to fix this problem

does anybody have any idea what to install/modify for these controls to work?
and what is this program that show the nice osd in gnome?

thanks in advance and sorry for my english, i'm trying to improve them

pantyhacker · 2006-01-24 15:56:09

you'll have to recompile your kernel with with sonypi as a module.
i have a PCG-SR7K, and the Fn keys don't work, but you can adjust the LCD brightness via a utility built into KDE.

mandos · 2006-01-24 19:34:02

i don't plan to use kde, anything else maybe, but not kde (several reasons...)
the keys do work, but i can't manage to control anything with them

thanks for replying

syamajala · 2006-01-24 19:53:43

you could probably use xbindkeys and the thingy for changing the screen brightness i don't remember the name of the program but i used it before on my vaio.

mandos · 2006-01-25 15:09:15

and the thingy for changing the screen brightness

it's that thingy that i'm looking for!!!
i'll try xbindkeys, thanks!

syamajala · 2006-01-25 19:41:52

oh the thingy is called spicctrl. its in extra

mandos · 2006-01-25 20:45:54

oh, but i have this one, but it doesn't work
it gets the battery status etc but I can't change the brightness of my screen

it seems that it doesn't work with VGN laptops

mandos · 2006-01-25 22:12:21

horrey!!
it worked

once i complete my re-installation of Arch I'll make a wiki and link it here

mandos · 2006-01-26 04:45:04

here it is:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sony_Vaio_VGN-B3VP

but it needs some more stuff to be completed

Tebari · 2006-02-11 00:31:01

I think I can help you get your Fn-keys running. I have a Sony Vaio PCG-K23, which like most Vaios, need the Fn-keys to be implemented in software. So I was searching arround and found fsfn a daemon that handles Fn-Keys, it also provides an on-screen display when you change the volume and brightness and thus it depends on xosd.

To use it, you need to install a patched version of the sony_acpi module that also detects Fn-Keys. You can download from http://download.berlios.de/fsfn/sony_acpi.tar.gz, then just untar it and just

make
make install
depmod -a
modprobe sony_acpi

To check if the module works

ls /proc/acpi/sony

You should see these three files

brightness  brightness_default  fnkey

Now for fsfn itself, I just made a PKGBUILD for it. I made it from the revision 44 in SVN since it fixes alot of issues that are present in version 1.0.

The PKGBUILD :

pkgname=fsfn-svn
pkgver=44
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="Sony Vaio laptop hotkey handler"
url="http://developer.berlios.de/projects/fsfn/"
backup=('etc/fsfn.conf')
source=('fsfn.rc.d')
depends=('xosd')
makedepends=('subversion')

_svntrunk=svn://svn.berlios.de/fsfn/trunk
_svnmod=fsfn

build() {
    cd $startdir/src

    msg "Starting SVN checkout..."
    
    svn co $_svntrunk/$_svnmod -r $pkgver $_svnmod
    
    msg "SVN checkout done or server timeout"
    msg "Starting make..."
    
    cp -r $_svnmod $_svnmod-build
    cd $_svnmod-build

    ./configure --prefix=/usr
    make || return 1
    make prefix=$startdir/pkg/usr install

    cd $startdir/src
    install -Dm755 fsfn.rc.d $startdir/pkg/etc/rc.d/fsfn
    install -Dm644 $_svnmod-build/etc/fsfn.conf $startdir/pkg/etc/fsfn.conf
    rm -rf $_svnmod-build
}

And the rc script fsfn.rc.d

#!/bin/bash

. /etc/rc.conf
. /etc/rc.d/functions

case "$1" in
    start)
        stat_busy "Starting Vaio Laptop Hotkey Handler"
        /usr/bin/fsfn &> /dev/null
        if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
                stat_fail
        else
                add_daemon fsfn
                stat_done 
        fi
        ;;
    stop)
        stat_busy "Stopping Vaio Laptop Hotkey Handler"
        PID=`cat /var/run/fsfn.pid`
        [ ! -z "$PID" ]  && kill $PID &> /dev/null 
        if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
            stat_fail
        else
            rm_daemon fsfn
            stat_done 
        fi
        ;;
    restart|force-reload)
        $0 stop
        sleep 1
        $0 start
        ;;
    *)
        echo "usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|force-reload}"
        exit 1
        ;;
esac
exit 0

Now just save them in the same folder and build the package.

After your install fsfn, you should edit the config file located at /etc/fsfn.conf. For reference just do man 5 fsfn to display the man page for fsfn.conf. When you are done run fsfn as root to test it.

/etc/rc.d/fsfn

When you confirm it's working, you can add fsfn to your daemons array in rc.conf, so fsfn starts at boot. To activate the on screen display, you just run fsfn -o as user. I use Gnome so I add that command in my session's start up programs.

I think that's it. Post if you have any questions, I'll keep an eye on this thread.

Edit
Something very important I forgot. Make sure the evdev kernel module is loaded. Since it provides the event interface which fsfn needs to poll key presses. I can't believe I forgot about it since that was the reason I couldn't make it work for a whole week :?

mandos · 2006-11-05 19:52:38

thanks for the reply
I know it was done aaaages ago, but I was away from the linux scene for a long time

I installed the modified sony_acpi but I can't see the fnkeys along with the brightness settings
any ideas why?

I have a vgn-b laptop, not a vgn-fs

QuimaxW · 2007-12-30 21:24:49

I know this is a really old thread...for those searching though, I figured I'd post and update...

As of (probably sooner than) kernel 2.6.23 sony-laptop kernel module works on my VGN-FS742/W. FSFN-SVN (release 56) works with the sony-laptop module. I'm trying to post FSFN-SVN to the aur so it can be downloaded from there.

Arch Linux

#1 2006-01-23 05:42:54

Sony Vaio and lcd brightness (and Fn keys in general)

#2 2006-01-24 15:56:09

Re: Sony Vaio and lcd brightness (and Fn keys in general)

#3 2006-01-24 19:34:02

Re: Sony Vaio and lcd brightness (and Fn keys in general)

#4 2006-01-24 19:53:43

Re: Sony Vaio and lcd brightness (and Fn keys in general)

#5 2006-01-25 15:09:15

Re: Sony Vaio and lcd brightness (and Fn keys in general)

#6 2006-01-25 19:41:52

Re: Sony Vaio and lcd brightness (and Fn keys in general)

#7 2006-01-25 20:45:54

Re: Sony Vaio and lcd brightness (and Fn keys in general)

#8 2006-01-25 22:12:21

Re: Sony Vaio and lcd brightness (and Fn keys in general)

#9 2006-01-26 04:45:04

Re: Sony Vaio and lcd brightness (and Fn keys in general)

#10 2006-02-11 00:31:01

Re: Sony Vaio and lcd brightness (and Fn keys in general)

#11 2006-11-05 19:52:38

Re: Sony Vaio and lcd brightness (and Fn keys in general)

#12 2007-12-30 21:24:49

Re: Sony Vaio and lcd brightness (and Fn keys in general)

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