Thread: HOWTO: Adjust brightness on Sony Vaio

Upon installing Ubuntu 5.10 on my Sony Vaio I discovered that the brightness was really bad. I hunted around for some info but nothing would keep the brightness settings upon reboot. Sure I could go into a terminal and reset it but what a pain in the ****.

I tried this first (you can do this if you like but try lower down first).
Install the package spicctrl (this is in universe so you need to make sure you repository's are up to date),

Code:

sudo apt-get install spicctrl

which gives you command-line control over brightness . Try

Code:

spicctrl -b 244

to brighten the screen (the higher the number the brighter, the lower..well I am sure you can figure it out).

This worked great until I rebooted and then back to square one.


Now, this works on my Vaio PCG-GRX600P in breezy and I would presume other Vaio models but seeing as how I only have the one I can't swear to it. If it works for you, post your result here. If it doesn't, well sorry about your luck but I found this on my own and I am a learner at this.

Step 1.

Code:

sudo chown system_username /proc/acpi/sony/brightness 
echo "n" > /proc/acpi/sony/brightness

where n is a number between 1 and 8.
Note that the quotes around the numeric value are required.

1 is the dimmest setting and 8 is the brightest.
Play around until you find the one you prefer but remember it for step 2.

Code:

sudo chown root /proc/acpi/sony/brightness

Step 2.

Code:

sudo chown system_username /proc/acpi/sony/brightness_default
echo "n" > /proc/acpi/sony/brightness_default

where n is the same number that you set it to in step 1.

Code:

sudo chown root /proc/acpi/sony/brightness_default

Now try a reboot (you don't have to obviously) to see if the settings stick.

Hope that worked for you.

These two work in Hoary but I couldn't say about the rest of it.

Code:

echo "1" > /proc/acpi/sony/brt

sets the lowest screen brightness

Code:

echo "8" > /proc/acpi/sony/brt

sets the highest screen brightness

That's working great on my vaio pcg-v505 thanks a lot. Maybe this will get me some extra battery life when I need it.

If you have one of the Vaio FS series then you can just use the fn keys for brightness control.
Not sure about other models.

EDIT: Look down for the how to.

Originally Posted by no1wantdthisname

If you have one of the Vaio FS series then you can just use the fn keys for brightness control.
Not sure about other models.

Go here: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p...1.html#2722251
The fn keys for volume control work as well.
And when you change volume or brightness a osd shows at the bottom of the screen for the current volume/brightness.

And if you're trying to extend battery life, you can have the powernowd script check whether your laptop is plugged in or not and then turn on powernowd/lower brightness when on battery, and turn off powernowd/raise brightness when plugged in.

Thanks for the find! I just followed the instructions in that link and now I have working volume and brightness keys on my SONY VAIO VGN-FS21 (this is a JAPANESE model.) There is also an OSD at the bottom of the screen!

One note: the forum introduces an rc.d script to start and stop the key handling daemon, but I found it simpler to add "fsfn" to the end of my /etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh.

Glad it's helping.

Now I just have to figure out the FN keys.

Will try this and let you know how it goes.

Go here: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p...1.html#2722251
The fn keys for volume control work as well.

I'm trying to get the Fn keys working on my Sony VAIO FS215S, but being a Linux newbie, I'm struggling a bit. I've been following the well-known Gentoo guide.

I do:

Code:

wget http://download.berlios.de/fsfn/sony_acpi.tar.gz 
tar zxvf sony_acpi.tar.gz 
cd sony_acpi 
make && sudo make install

modprobe sony_acpi 
ls /proc/acpi/sony

This is all fine, but when I do [i[echo sony_acpi >> /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6[/i], I get an error. Now I'm sure that this is because this guide is Gentoo-specific, but I don't know how to alter it for Ubuntu.

Also, I started the next stage:

Code:

wget http://download.berlios.de/fsfn/fsfn-0.2.tar.gz 
tar zxvf fsfn-0.2.tar.gz 
cd fsfn-0.2 
./configure && make && sudo make install

When I do ./configure, I get an error about Xosd not being a new enough version (I think it said it's < 0.7.0), but I can't seem to update it.

Any help would be grately appreciated.

EDIT: Updated for dapper

First of all do this:

Code:

sudo apt-get install libasound2-dev build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r) gcc-3.4

If you want the onscreen display then also get

Code:

sudo apt-get install libxosd-dev

Next:

Code:

wget http://download.berlios.de/fsfn/fsfn-1.0.tar.gz
tar zxvf fsfn-1.0.tar.gz
cd fsfn-1.0

If you want osd:

Code:

./configure && make && sudo make install

No osd:

Code:

./configure --disable-xosd && make && sudo make install

After installing that you can test this by doing:

Code:

sudo fsfn

If you enabled osd:

Code:

fsfn -o

You should see a bar at the bottom of your screen when using the fn keys.

Next would be the startup script. The script from the gentoo site doesn't work so I wrote my own. This just starts up fsfn.
Attached at bottom.

Make it executable and move the fsfn script to /etc/init.d/

Code:

chown root:root fsfn.txt && sudo chmod +x fsfn.txt && sudo mv fsfn.txt /etc/init.d/fsfn

To start it up on boot

Code:

sudo update-rc.d fsfn defaults

If you want the osd to show up when you change volume/brightness
click the start menu and SYSTEM>PREFERENCES>SESSIONS, click the startup tab and add
"fsfn -o" with order 50.

Thanks so much, that's exactly what I needed! Everything is working perfectly. Thanks again.

when i do:
modprobe sony_acpi
ls /proc/acpi/sony/

all it shows is:

brightness brightness_defaul

why am is it no showing/installing 'fnkey' ?

Originally Posted by swoon

when i do:
modprobe sony_acpi
ls /proc/acpi/sony/

all it shows is:

brightness brightness_defaul

why am is it no showing/installing 'fnkey' ?

Er, not sure, what model do you have? This applies only to FS series. For example, I have a Vaio VGN-FS640/W.

You might have to do a

Code:

sudo rmmod sony_acpi

beforehand as well.