Laptop brightness issue after restarting X

[awagnerur]

Hey guys, I'm new to Puppy, and I have to say in advance I'm impressed... I always loved keeping the size of the code as small as possible. I've had DSL for a while but after testing Puppy as live CD, I decided I want to keep this one for good. And here I ran into an interesting problem. In order to configure the synaptics driver I needed to restart x. So I did, but x won't start. So I simply tried xwin and it worked, but everything went dim, except for the mouse cursor. And by everything I mean everything, not just x... when I reboot, it's ok till x starts (since session is saved on the hard drive).

I've tried to reconfigure x but I've realized, that as I stated earlier, this is not an x issue, everything is dark except for that stupid cursor... the brightness controls work fine, so I can dim it even more...

I've had problems with DHCP under Vary when I saved the session, so there I deleted the saved session and it worked, I would like to avoid that here though...

It looks like something messed with the laptops dim function itself.

Thanks in advance!

awagnerur

[awagnerur]

It is NOT a hardware malfunction and it's only related to this specific Puppy "save". If I boot Vary or my previously installed Suse or even booting in Lucid up till x starts, everything is fine. I'm using 5.2

Sorry I left these out!

awagnerur

[awagnerur]

Hey guys, as in subject, I've tested it again booting directly from the CD. Everything is fine until I click on the touchpad settings. Then it tells me to restart x. When I do that (CTRL+ALT+BS), it fails to start x. This time I didn't start x, rather the wizard. It recognized the resolution, and the moment I pressed probe, it went dim again. So in order to have my screen bright, I can't use the scrolling function of the touchpad right now.

Could please advise, or at least let me know if that's the first time you've ever heard about this bug...

Thanks,

awagnerur

[stu90]

did you try restarting X from the menu?

menu button > shutdown > restart x server

or from the command prompt after CTRL+ALT+BS
type command:
xwin openbox
or
xwin jwm

for which ever windows manager you use (openbox by default)

[awagnerur]

Hey, thanks for the reply!

Yes, I have, once x is running all the consoles are dim too, so somehow it dims the hardware and from that point on whatever I do within that session it stays like that.

New test though: when I start the system with pfix=nox, the screen doesn't go dim, it definitely only starts when I run xwin and it is consistent from that point on in all the consoles too.

*edit* So the problem is caused by X but from that point on it looks like a hardware dim, except that the freakin' mouse cursor stays bright, and any icon you are dragging... that I can't put my finger on...

Sorry for my English...

[bigpup]

This may help.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 2143599847

[pemasu]

What graphics does your machine use and what graphics driver is loaded and in use ?
What happens if you choose vesa driver ?

[awagnerur]

Hey Guys, thanks for the replies!

So, here's what I've got now. The gamma I've tried earlier when I found it, it helped just a little, but not enough to actually be able to work (or enjoy a movie).

But, I wanted to try the Vesa then I forgot, so thanks for that. Here's the logfile for both (Vesa first, Radeon next):


Identifier "Card0"
Driver "vesa" #card0driver
VendorName "ATI Technologies Inc"
BoardName "RS690M [Radeon X1200 Series]"
BusID "PCI:1:5:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 16
#Option "metamodes" "1440x900_60 +0+0" #METAMODES_0
Subsection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubsection
EndSection


Identifier "Card0"
Driver "radeon" #card0driver
VendorName "ATI Technologies Inc"
BoardName "RS690M [Radeon X1200 Series]"
BusID "PCI:1:5:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 16
#Option "metamodes" "1440x900_60 +0+0" #METAMODES_0
Subsection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubsection
EndSection


so...

1) The Vesa driver didn't change anything, but when I switched back to the console to end it manually, the console was bright again. So I switched back to x, and it was bright, although buggy... so I ended x from the console, started it again, and it was bright. But, the resolution is only 1152x864, which is viewable, but since it's a TFT, it's not the best especially for programming. Plus the config file says nothing about that resolution, but I can't even select 1440x900 in the GUI resolution changer. And even though that's what I select manually when I reconfigure it, it always comes in the lower res.

2) So I've switched back to the radeon driver and it got dim again, but at least with the native resolution of my screen.

3) And I've tried the VESA again, the same thing, first bright and buggy, than for the second run it's bright but the resolution is low, even though I set it to 1440x900 in xorgwizard. I didn't even bother changing the config file, since it says 1440x900.

Is there anywhere else I can set or I should look? Maybe I'm missing something. Since I'm not using this for anything other than developing/net/videos, I don't need a radeon driver, VESA should be fine... although I can't hear sound right now, but that's not a major issue for the moment.

Thanks for the input, if you can help further, I'd appreciate it!

awagnerur

*edit*
Oh, and when I boot from the CD, the brightness is correct with the radeon driver as I described in my first post as well, until I try to setup my touchpad. Then it goes bad... maybe I should just copy the values from the working touchpad conf now and put it in manually without starting the wizard and loading that driver?

[navegante]

With the first Quirky on a laptop I selected on xorgwizard 1024x768x16 and I had the same trouble, with 1024x767x24 not. Even online videostreaming goes faster.

[pemasu]

With vesa driver I dont think so there is much you can do. It has issues with resolution.
It was just test if it is graphics driver related problem and it looks like that.

Have you tried radeonhd driver or proprietary ati driver. There should be ATI package in lucid puppy repo. And you can get one also from ATI site. Installing from source needs devx sfs and kernel source sfs to be loaded. At least you can check which ATI package supports your graphics card.
I think that there is also somekind card database copied from official sites somewhere in puppy lucid repos. Well... at least for nvidia cards there are.

And you could also try another puppy or derivative. With different kernel. Like Fluppy, spup or ......

[awagnerur]

@Navegante: thanx bro, (or sis? ) that solved it. Man how many times I wanted to select 24 bit just to test and kept forgetting... aaarrrggghhh... In my previous experience, I always had trouble with 24 bit and so I settled for 16 bit (who sees the difference anyway ).

@Pemasu: thanks for the ideas, I'll keep testing that so we can at least see where and what the bug really is. Btw, yes, with Vary I had no problems except the auto DHCP... the interesting thing is for me still, that the standard radeon driver had absolutely no problems before I clicked on the synaptics touchpad setup icon...

So thanks guys and from now on at least google will show this to anybody who's experiencing similar issues.

awagnerur