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ihavenoname

Member

Registered: 2006-01-09

Posts: 198

changing brightness in gnome-power-manager has no effect

Well it's mostly all in the title. When I change the brightness slider in gnome-power-manager it has no affect on brightness. However the fn key combo for changing the brightness does have change the brightness yet it brings up the volume like dialog for brightness yet no change is registered on the slider (despite brightness increasing). This erratic behavior is not seen in Fedora or Ubuntu so I know it can be made to work. I have a Dell Inspiron 640m.

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In this land of the pain the sane lose not knowing they were part of the game.

~LP

kamituel

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2006-09-14

Posts: 47

Website

Re: changing brightness in gnome-power-manager has no effect

It looks like this applet is using DBus to change brightness (not sure, but probably it is communicating with gnome-power-manager).
So maybe your DBus setup is not correct and brightness applet is not able to talk to gnome-power-manager?

Try

dbus-monitor

and then change your brightness. Will the changes be listed there?

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I tried, I failed, no matter. Try again, fail again, fail better.

ihavenoname

Member

Registered: 2006-01-09

Posts: 198

Re: changing brightness in gnome-power-manager has no effect

yep I get output both when I use the build in FN+UP/DOWN ARROW KEY as well as when I change the brightness in gnome-power-manager. The difference is when I use the built in FN key combo the last thing that is output is always   uint32 0 where is with the power manager   uint32 X is output where X corresponds to the brightness level set on the power manager (so If I move the slider to 100% brightness I get   uint32 100 etc.

Any ideas?

---

In this land of the pain the sane lose not knowing they were part of the game.

~LP

kamituel

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2006-09-14

Posts: 47

Website

Re: changing brightness in gnome-power-manager has no effect

I have one more idea
It seems like preferences set it gnome-power-manager are overriding those set manually when using brigthness applet.
In the first tab (about AC power):
- set brightness slider to 100%. On my computer it is the first slider from the bottom, but I can't give you the exact label
because I've using polish version of gnome
In the second tab (about battery power):
- disable the second checkbox from the bottom - it is the one which is saying aboute reducing the screen backlight

Any success?

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I tried, I failed, no matter. Try again, fail again, fail better.

ihavenoname

Member

Registered: 2006-01-09

Posts: 198

Re: changing brightness in gnome-power-manager has no effect

sorry for the later reply.

No this didn't work. I also thought that my keycodes weren't setup but that too was not the case.  It's really an odd issue. It seems Dell has built in the ability to lower the brightness using the brightness keys regardless of where you are (including the bios). However for some reason it's integrating into arch ( I also remember it not integrating in Debian either). I mean I can change the brightness but not with the applets, so every time I disconnect by adapter generally have to lower brightness manually. Which is annoying.

---

In this land of the pain the sane lose not knowing they were part of the game.

~LP

thunderogg

Member

From: Rio de Janeiro

Registered: 2008-07-13

Posts: 172

Re: changing brightness in gnome-power-manager has no effect

Maybe a stupid question: Are you a member of the power group? I had a similar problem when I forgot to add my user to the power group.

ihavenoname

Member

Registered: 2006-01-09

Posts: 198

Re: changing brightness in gnome-power-manager has no effect

Maybe a stupid question: Are you a member of the power group? I had a similar problem when I forgot to add my user to the power group.

I am now. But it hasn't fixed anything. I restarted X after adding my user to the group.

However when I started gnome-power-manager as root.  It wouldn't let me access the preference dialog BUT when I increased or decreased the brightness it showed me the proper progressbar indicator. I will restart and see what happens.

edit:
After a restart all is working well as far as I can tell. Thank you very much for all your help. It seems it was in fact an issue with the groups.

Last edited by ihavenoname (2008-09-09 05:26:13)

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In this land of the pain the sane lose not knowing they were part of the game.

~LP

thunderogg

Member

From: Rio de Janeiro

Registered: 2008-07-13

Posts: 172

Re: changing brightness in gnome-power-manager has no effect

After a restart all is working well as far as I can tell. Thank you very much for all your help. It seems it was in fact an issue with the groups.

It's good to hear it's working!