(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Puppy 4.31 misses brightness control on Acer Travelmate 6592 laptop. Puppy 4.12 and Puppy 4.21 brightness works. It looks like /sys/devices/virtual/backlight is needed for working brigtness and Puppy 4.31 on my machine does not have it. Same with Choicepup 4.31.

I think that something is missing, module perhaps. Acpi something maybe.
But I dont know what I should install to get brightness working.

If somebody knows relevant information, please send information here or PM me.
I will post working solution.

With best regards

I found module acer-wmi. I added the module to be loaded at bootup and it is now loaded. But I dont have access to change values at config files brightness and max_brightness at /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/backlight/acer-wmi/device/backlight/acer-wmi

and Fn + brightness button combination does not do anything still.

Well serching continue....

TOP 4.21 echo 3 > /sys/devices/virtual/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness instantly diminishes brightness

Choicepup 4.31 echo some value > /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi/backlight/acer-wmi/device/backlight/acer-wmi/brightness does not do the trick. So acer-wmi dont work. My acer is compatible with acer-wmi according to list.

Well. Still I dont know what module works on older kernel and puppies. Dmesg tells me, that there are a lot of rows about ACPI, more than with 4.31.
LSmod tells me there is wmi loaded, but nothing acpi named.

To be continued....

On older puppies loading video module evidently is behind /sys/devices/virtual/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness.

So next I am going to find out differences there are in video modules.

To be continued....

Allright. Something has happened. Some module has changed the actual_brightness to 1 from 7. Now my screen is really cool. Well I tried to remove video module. No go with acer-wmi. Xbacklight says no output.

So something changes brightness in my machine. Xorg maybe. But I am still lost. Google search with key words dont lead anything useful. Many kind of scripts which are distro spesific. murga-linux search has not find anything spesific with my problem yet. But the truth is there somewhere.

To be continued....

That sort of thing is actually compiled into the kernel (or it can be). You may need some modules compiled against the kernel that are specific to Acer, which is another way of doing it.

I spotted them when I was compiling a kernel a while ago, but left them out since I couldn't see the need. They were probably left out for space or compatibility reasons, or simply forgotten.

Thanks of the advice. I have learned that there are many modules which can be used to change brightness. And there are usually 2-3 modules loaded or able to load which control it. Acer-wmi is one of them and I can install and remove it with the kernel. Only problem is that it does not work.
Other module tests have been spesific to other distros or kernels and they havent worked.

If I would know what modules or apps or something might work, I am willing to test.

Brightness problem, especially now with brightness at lowest is main problem with these newest puppies.

Well 4.12 and 4.2 works ok. Unfortunatly they dont support sfs4.

Compiling kernel is something I dont want to do with puppies. It has been about 8-9 years I have done it with Redhat 5.0 and 6.0. I didnt like it. New kernels have much more options I dont understand at all.

But if someone could show me the way...

Post removed. The content was not meant to be permanent.

I installed and ran MSOffice on Puppy Linux using all the above mentioned instructions. I got problems with running Excel. cell phone spy Can anyone help me?

The above long post about fixing windows is a little in the wrong place. I once helped to fix that post. The original poster couldnt get that post visible...and asked help. I managed to fix it and I tested it in my old thread. I didnt remember to remove it. The original thread still exists. I am sorry of this misleading information. I remove my test post now.