Problem with backlight control and question about kernel information and patches
I have no control over my laptop's backlight under Linux. This is a
regression since it did work fine but I'm not certain exactly when it
stopped working.
I am very new to Linux but I think that the problem is that
/sys/class/backlight/ is empty. That is, I know that the directory is
empty but don't know enough to do more than think it is the source of
the problem.
This looks like a regression which might be fixed by the patch at
https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/499221 but I do not know enough to
have any clue whether this is the case or not. In fact, I am not even
certain how to tell if the kernel I'm using has this patch applied (or
if it has even been merged upstream). I have read significant amounts
of documentation, but nothing I've learnt has had much bearing on this
particular problem so far. (I may well be looking in the wrong place.
In that case, a pointer would be hugely appreciated - it took me
several days to realise I needed to look for "backlight" rather than
"brightness".)
I haven't found reports of this problem with my particular laptop but
the problem is described on other laptops as being fixed by patch
499221. So I'm not sure.
uname info: 3.0.0-1-powerpc #1 Sun Jul 24 13:59:10 UTC 2011 ppc GNU/Linux
Machine is a 12" G4 Aluminium PowerBook with a 1.5 GHz processor and a
nvidia graphics card so I'm using the nouveau drivers. To get this
working I added the line append="video=nvidiafb:off" in yaboot.conf
for the entries for Debian. yaboot was automatically configured to
dual boot Linux and Mac OS X by the Debian installer.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
- cfr
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