Acer laptop backlight gets dimmer with each boot

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oui

Acer laptop backlight gets dimmer with each boot

#1 Post by oui »

Hi

As I have only a laptop since one year (Acer emachine with AMD64 2 GB RAM HD 160 GB, 2 USB plugs, no FD) I test and test one puppy after the next :roll: because all Puppy's beginning with 4.31 have the same bug and I hope to find one without the bug:

the backlight of the screen is not correctly managed and the screen become more dark after a few restart (with upup 4.54 is the screen completely black now :roll: ) and the special keys of laptop don't work to in- or decrease the brightness don't work :?

I see a problem in the kind how the developer of Puppy are working:

a/ I miss a crew of testing contributers with divers (difficult) hardware to test the new puplet's before more work is done with them. probably all new puplet's would have been without bug if puppy 4.31 would be tested correctly :!:

b/ dark background picture are more imposant...
... but only if you can see somewhat :idea: . not all puplets offer the possibility to chance to white or light grey or really light blue background

Last demand: Swiss people produce a great number of new small Linux (actually SliTaz and Debris but it was more in the last years). I find, a reason is that existent distributions like Puppy don't give access to minimum commodity like keyboard configuration (the main keyboard configuration proposed in SliTaz is ch_fr :roll: !); you can't work so you cock your own solution... The ch-keyboard design is probably the map covering the most European languages! All West-European languages can be written about correctly with it excepted renversed Spanish question mark and one or two Danish signs. Possible special letters: with the signs äáàãã ç éêèë iíîìï ñ oóôòö ß uúûùüũ yýÿ !

And the internationaled US map would be better...

Thank you for the attention.

Bye

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

That problem is now really good solved by the publication of Quirky Linux 0.0.8, a very good new Linux! Thank you Barry for that development!

As usual we have now to find out which packages we can use in Quirky Linux 0.0.8, and I will try to give as follow some indications about my experience with some existent packages for other distributions used with Quirky 0.0.8.

My first tested download is following:

BROWSER

SEAMONKEY 2.0
available here: http://www.filefactory.com/file/a07ecga ... 0-i486_pet

- it works immediately after installation without restart!
- it is possible to transfer you bookmarks from seamonkey 1.1.18 at the first start
- I use it also in a remastered version of quirky and I suppose it is from the same pet but I am not certain (the pet was already in my repertory "pets" on my harddisk)

INSTANT MESSENGER

I did spend a lot of time to try to use ayttm as proposed in the distribution!

But it will not work on my PC :x ; only IRC chat but that can Seamonkey! I don't need an extra IRC chat tool at all...

I did help me with instantbird. It is easy to install:

download in /usr/lib, click on it in the rox filer, mark all, and click on "extract"...

To start, rename ayttm in /usr/bin and install a link

ln -s /usr/lib/instantbird/instantbird /usr/bin/ayttm

and change the text in /usr/local/bin/defaultchat from

#!/bin/sh
exec ayttmshell "$@"

into

#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/lib/instantbird/instandtbird "$@"

erase the downloaded file instantbird.....tar.bz2 in /usr/lib !

INTERNET PHONE

SKYPE

miss a library to start!

(you will see that if you install and try to start from the terminal emulator ! You find an clear error message in the terminal emulator! If you directly try to start by clicking on the appearing icon in the Menu, you see nothing: nothing happens...)

get the library package libXss-1.0.0.tar.gz

at http://www.puppylinux.ca/tpp/ttuuxxx/Libs/

and install it as you did do with instantbird

when finished, please move the file contained in the new subdirectory in /usr/lib (/urs/lib/libXss-1.0.0) directly into /usr/lib !

then install a skype package.

INTERNATIONALIZATION

I did insert following lines in [url]file:///etc/X11/xorg.conf[/url].

Option "XkbLayout" "ch,ro,in"
Option "XkbVariant" "fr,,"
Option "XKbOptions" "grp:alt_shift_toggle"

and mark the existent XkbLayout line with "#" at the line head,

and I did add fonts directories in /usr/fonts/default/TTF

I always load in that directory new subdirectories copied from Debian or Ubuntu with

- ttf-devanagari-fonts to write in hindi language
- freefont
- ttf-dejavu (large)
- ttf-liberation
- ttf-lucida

after that folling by restart X through the Menu

I can now write with keyboard layout swiss roman, indi and romanian and change it within the same document by shifting and pushing the ALT key at the same time!

MAJOR TOOLS FOR DIFFERENT PURPOSES: Java, Flash, Wine, qemu:

download

- adobe_flash_player-10.0.22.87.pet

- java-1.6u17.pet

- wine-1.1.23.pet

- qemu-0.91.pet

qemu usage:

Short instruction for the usage of qemu (adapted to play old windows 95 games):

- http://translate.google.com/translate?u ... =&ie=UTF-8

OPEN OFFICE

as AbiWord makes errors if writing in complex languages (for ex. Hindi; AbiWord don't write correctly the short signs marked using the "virama" for example in the word "hindustani" itself, where the first "n" and the "s" have to be shorted) I did spend a long time to find, download and install diverse existing PET-packages. but I did find a SFS-file on my hard disk with a development version of OO-3.2.0 being free of above error!

you will find the download information at the food of following wiki page:

http://puppylover.netsons.org/dokupuppy ... fice_suite

and the installation's instructions on this page:

http://www.puppylinux.org/news/releases ... -puppy-430

after the first start of OO, you have to set up the OO-system for writing in CLT (complex language mode) if you want to do that!

CLT usage:

- > tools >> options >>> language settings >>>> languages

at the food of the little window mark:

- enabled for Complex Text Layout (CLT) and enter your wished CLT-language!

-
Last edited by oui on Thu 11 Mar 2010, 00:37, edited 8 times in total.

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eztuxer
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#2 Post by eztuxer »

Did you try puppy 41x & 42x series as well, and do they have the same problem ?
Don't poop it down... Pup it Up !

oui

#3 Post by oui »

hi

I am yet using puppy 4.2 now and I also use different puppy's 4.1. they don't have the problem. the only one difference with Ubuntu is that Ubuntu notice the brightness and restarts with the best possible brightness.

Puppy 4.0 did have the same problem as puppy 4.31 and the new puppy 5alpha.

bye

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dejan555
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Re: all new Pupet's have the same bug...

#4 Post by dejan555 »

oui wrote: a/ I miss a crew of testing contributers with divers (difficult) hardware to test the new puplet's before more work is done with them. probably all new puplet's would have been without bug if puppy 4.31 would be tested correctly :!:
Puppy Linux project is not ran by some big company. People who come here like you report bugs if they want, so I guess we have one more tester with different hardware now heh? :) Report bug to appropriate thread to puppy version.
puppy.b0x.me stuff mirrored [url=https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_Mb589v0iCXNnhSZWRwd3R2UWs]HERE[/url] or [url=http://archive.org/details/Puppy_Linux_puppy.b0x.me_mirror]HERE[/url]

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pemasu
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#5 Post by pemasu »

I dont think it is bug. kernels after 2.6.25 uses acer-wmi kernel module to change brightness and other things too. It is unfortunately not very good module. Kernels 2.6.25 and before uses acer_acpi and it works...Unfortunately it is not developed anymore. For historical reasons it is left downloadeable and I downloaded acer_acpi source package.
See info on this link: http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation ... er-wmi.txt

Cut from the link:
Backlight
*********
The backlight brightness control is available on all acer-wmi supported
hardware. The maximum brightness level is usually 15, but on some newer laptops
it's 10 (this is again autodetected).
The backlight is exposed through the backlight subsystem, and can be found in:
/sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/backlight/acer-wmi/

Link to check your acer compatibility: http://code.google.com/p/aceracpi/wiki/ ... edHardware
Well my acer laptop was supported but at real life that was not the case with brightness. Bluetooth light came on nevertheless :wink:

So without acer-wmi support the brightness changes randomly with every boot, mostly it is not too dim, but ...

Nobody so far has told me what I can do to get brightness work.
Gposil has tried to help me and so on. If it is possible to add module acer_acpi to recent kernels I would do it. But I dont know how should I do it or is it possible without compiling whole kernel. Compiling the module from source might be possible with my skills. Dont know what I would need. Dev sfs and kernel headers and kernel source and ....?

So far I use (right now) Puppy 431 with retrokernel 2.6.25 and Choicepup 4.12 when I need best brightness like image editing ...

Acer-wmi is under development, so maybe newest kernels works better with newer version of acer-wmi.

I would like to have Puppy with sfs4 compatibility and brightness control. Not possible right now.
Last edited by pemasu on Sun 10 Jan 2010, 18:54, edited 1 time in total.

disciple
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#6 Post by disciple »

Sounds like a bug to me... I think you mean it isn't really a bug specific to Puppy bug, just to the kernel module.
Is it actually a bug that has been reported somewhere?
Do you know a good gtkdialog program? Please post a link here

Classic Puppy quotes

ROOT FOREVER
GTK2 FOREVER

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pemasu
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#7 Post by pemasu »

Yes, I meant it is not bug in Puppy but yes you could say it is bug in acer-wmi.
I dont know where I could find relevant info of official bug reports. But with google I found that with acer-wmi kernels there is a lot of reports by acer laptop owners, that they dont have brightness control. With different distros also.

Is it possible to use newer acer-wmi with Puppy, if I find it somewhere without needing to compile it or is it possible to use it after compiling just the acer-wmi module ?

disciple
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Location: Auckland, New Zealand

#8 Post by disciple »

But with google I found that with acer-wmi kernels there is a lot of reports by acer laptop owners, that they dont have brightness control.
Not having brightness control is one thing, but it is a lot worse if it gets darker each time you boot and there is no way to fix it.

It will need to be compiled for Puppy. You shouldn't need to recompile the whole kernel, but I think you will need to download the whole kernel source...
Do you know a good gtkdialog program? Please post a link here

Classic Puppy quotes

ROOT FOREVER
GTK2 FOREVER

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pemasu
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#9 Post by pemasu »

I contacted acer-wmi maintainer and he asked me to send him my dmesg. I send him kernel 2.6.30.5 Puppy version dmesg. And also dsdt file. Lets see if he finds out why acer-wmi does not work. I report if he contacts me and has found something relevant.

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pemasu
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#10 Post by pemasu »

Quirky008 has been the first which supports backlight brightness since Puppy 4.3.1 retro in my acer laptop !!!
Newer kernel maybe has done the trick.

Great news to some acer laptop owners !!

eden6000
Posts: 259
Joined: Sun 08 Apr 2007, 06:49

#11 Post by eden6000 »

Hi, same thing for me too, Acer Aspire 5315 with intel graphics...quirky controls perfectly laptop backlight...it's just that I'm using puppies 4.31 and I find myself comfortable with it, I didn't want to change it....

oui

#12 Post by oui »

hi

pretty cat! really good...

thank you Barry!

but we have to find out which packages are able to really work fine with it

a/ after installation
b/ in remastered catlet's

I propose to write it here to centralize the information in this discussion!

salut

oui

#13 Post by oui »

please see message 1 !
Last edited by oui on Wed 10 Mar 2010, 23:10, edited 2 times in total.

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pemasu
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#14 Post by pemasu »

Posting from Quirky008. I have problems with it. Ext filesystem errors all the time. And wireless works and dont ...X crashes even after fsck check. I have it in my menu.lst with every puppy. But right now it works. Probably not with next boot.
So I am telling that this version is not stable enough. But kernel 2.6.33 is the way with brightness control and that is good news. Maybe next Quirky is more stable....

oui

#15 Post by oui »

Hi Pemasu

I have also problems but only with an extra big (about 500 MiB) remastered version. The invoqued problem concerns also the memory management, but I did not write the exact error message.

I habe also 2 non remastered versions:

- the same scope as the extra big remastered version, and
- a light one version only with seamonkey 2.0 at this time,

both in frugal installation in my vfat partition. it works. the only one actual problem in the light one is that it did not resize the personal file by request.

how did you use that Quircy?

good luck!

salut

oui

#16 Post by oui »

please see message 1 !
Last edited by oui on Wed 10 Mar 2010, 23:48, edited 1 time in total.

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pemasu
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#17 Post by pemasu »

I use Quirky as all my puppies. Frugal in their own subdirs. Only four files in every subdir and apps I use as sfs in /mnt/home. I use sfs4 only right now. That way no need to fatten savefile with puppies. Thunderbird and Openoffice I have in their own folder at /mnt/home. SoftmakerSmall 46 MB sfs I have also because it has finnish hyphenation. Made that sfs because it is much smaller than Openoffice and supports docx which unfortunately is mandatory to be able to read. My collegues does not know how to change default saving in MS office 2007.

Long story and off topic but sometimes you just write....

oui

#18 Post by oui »

Hi Pemasu

I nether use Puppy frugal within a linux file system any more. It did disturb very hard my computer in the past and fsck on big hard disk is not really pleasant...

for this reason my "big" hard disk from laptop (not really big: only 150 GiO) has following structure:

sda1 10 GiO ext2 Debian or Ubuntu
sda2 15 GiO vfat from freeDOS
sda3 extended about 120 GiO: Rest of the Harddisk
sda5: ext3 about 115 GiO: data
sda6: ext2 about 1,32 GiO: experimental
sda7: ext2 about 31,35 MiO (yes, MiO): commando line mini linux system for Grub legacy :wink: (able to start: slitaz base!)
sda4 1,95 GiO SWAP

salut

oui

#19 Post by oui »

moved to msg 1
Last edited by oui on Wed 10 Mar 2010, 23:55, edited 1 time in total.

oui

#20 Post by oui »

- OpenOffice3.1.1.pet

it works properly with West-European languages but not with Devanagari keyboard (as in abiword, the reason why I did test OO at this stage of the installation, the "virama" as in abi don't works in OO, but be quiet, it works in "geany" and in "didiwiki" ! you can also write Hindi but have to get your texts in the text repertory of didiwiki!)

NOT yet tested for remastering

salut
Last edited by oui on Thu 11 Mar 2010, 00:22, edited 1 time in total.

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