Ubuntu / Apple :: MacBook Pro Brightness Does Not Work?
Dec 29, 2010
I've been using Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit on my MacBook Pro 5,5 for about a week now. And I've noticed that the screen brightness adjustment does not work. When I click the F1 and F2 buttons I get the notification that it's changing but it doesn't actually change it. So I added the brightness adjustment to the panel and it won't let me move the toggle thingy. Has anybody else had this problem? All my other F keys work fine.
I'd been trying to get into Linux before I bought it so I figured that I would try to get it onto my new Mac so that I could use it wherever I am. I decided to try Debian Lenny 5.0.3 a whirl after reading about all the different distros available. I've successfully installed it and I can get to it with rEFIt, and I have quite a few things working such as the video drivers and wifi. However, I've had trouble getting it to a level where it'd be usable away from home. Here are the main problems I'm worried about:
1) I installed pommed but I still can't use the brightness keys to change the screen brightness. I'm not sure if there's some other workaround for this?
2) I tried some recommended power management packages (gnome-power-manager) but it doesn't seem to be accessible or functional right now. I don't have any way to control it or get to it that is obvious to me. Is an icon or anything supposed to appear on the task bar when you install or what? Getting some sort of power management on here is important because it gets really lousy battery life otherwise.
3) Being a Macbook, there's no right-click button. Multitouch would be really nice (two-finger scrolling!) but I'd be OK with ANY way to right-click with the touchpad. I have a wireless USB keyboard/mouse combo that works at home at least . . . right out of the box too!
4) I've seen some packages called the Mactel PPA, but they are made for Ubuntu. Since Debian and Ubuntu are so similar, is there any way to make those work on Lenny? I think that if I got those to work, I could fix some of the problems above. Or do I have to install Ubuntu?
5) I just noticed that the sound doesn't seem to work yet either.
According to the Community Documentation for a 6,2 running Maverick, the LCD brightness just "Works." I have mbp-nvidia-bl-dkms and pommed installed, but this has never worked for me.
I Install Ubuntu 9.10 and I can't control Brightness, show brightness popup (Fn+F5F6) but screen brightness don't work, I install NVIDIA Driver Linux-x86_64 version 190.53, modiffed xorg.conf.
I've recently installed Ubuntu 10.04 (amd64) on my MacBook 3,1 (1GB memory). Most things work perfectly on install, and I've got the iSight working now too!
However, although suspend works fine, hibernate does not. When I try to hibernate, the screen goes blank with the back light on for a few seconds, then the screen goes off completely for about 0.1 of a scond and I hear the optical drive whirr (like it does when booting), and then about 4 or 5 seconds after that it finally powers off.
Then, when I restart, I see the rEFIt menu, then the GRUB menu and it appears to boot like normal and *not* resume from hibernate!
I'm not sure what log I should look in? When I look in /var/log/pm-suspend.log the last line says "performing hibernate", but there's nothing about even attempting to resume.
UPDATE: Forgot to mention, I have a swap partition that is larger than 1GB.
UPDATE 2: Also, after attempting to hibernate, when the system restarts, WiFi has been disabled -- I have to double-tap (right-click) on the WiFi icon and re-enable it. I *think* this is because the hibernate process disables networking, but it then fails to re-enable it because is fails to resume.
I'm having a problem getting the apple remote on my Macbook 2,1 to work with Karmic and am looking for a little advice. I have followed the guide here [URl] and utilised the extended .lircrc in the first post of this thread [URL]linked to by the guide however I cannot get any action from my remote (it does work in OSX).
The problem, I believe, lies in where Gnome needs to start irexec and irxevent. Running irexrc -d from a terminal gives no output but I can also not find a process running after launch.Running irxevent -d returns 'irxevent: could not connect to socket irxevent: No such file or directory'I have also installed gnome-lirc-properties which (until a recent reboot) reported that there was no IR daemon running.
I am dual-booting Karmic/OS X. I have a MacBook Pro 5,1. When using the keyboard to change the backlight, the graphic in the top left does move to indicate a higher brightness (albeit, it moves extremely slowly).
I, of course, have all the necessary drivers installed.
I have all the packages I needed from the Mactel repository. This has been a problem within Karmic since I've put it on my MBP. There have been several updates from the Mactel repository concerning the Nvidia backlight package (I don't remember exactly what that package is called though). I hope each time that it will fix what is going on, but obviously, it hasn't.
Is there any program that I could use to otherwise change the backlight? When I'm sitting outside it's really difficult to see what's on my screen as it also doesn't automatically respond to the change in environmental brightness by making the screen brighter.
I can't seem to get any of the alt-keys from my regular keys. (i.e. alt+(any key) does not give me the output that it normally should. For instance, I can't make the "does not equal" sign by pressing alt+= (alt+equal sign))Is there any way to enable all the keys in the MBP keyboard? Or am I just stuck without my dear alt-keys?
I am running Karmic (9.10) on my macbook air (2,1) and although many things work fine (I wrote about it here:[URL]) one of the last things that doesn't work is setting the screen brightness. The FN-F11/F12 combo does bring up the brightness adjustment notification window (top right) and I can change the setting, but it has no effect UNTILL I reboot or suspend to RAM and reboot.
A related issue is that the brightness doesn't automatically adjust to the surrounding brightness.
I originally installed Maverick on my Macbook 5.1 using rEFIt to dual boot. For some reason, after installing Compiz my screen brightness functionality stopped working. It was permanently 100%. I thought that upgrading to Natty might work, but no luck. So far I've tried changing the brightness manually in terminal and in power-management, editing the grub file and also reinstalling compiz, all to no avail. Trying to alter brightness using the fn keys displays the brightness panel in the top right, and it decreases in value as it should, but the screen stays bright. The brightness settings work fine when I boot to Mac.
I am having a weird issue where my brightness keys on my macbook v4.1 work, but for some reason the brightness notifications have stopped working. I can clearly press the buttons to reduce and increase the brightness, but no notifications. Network manger, sound, firefox, amarok notifications work, but not brightness. It did popup, but I am note sure when or what update broke the notifications.
I'm running 2.6.35 on a macbook Air. Since Hal is being deprecated I got rid of it but now I cannot control brightness with the keyboard.Looking at the code on gnome-power-manager, if it doesn't find hal it defaults to xrandr, but I couldn't find a way of controlling brightness with xrandr. Also, I don't see any keybindings on XF86MonBrightness{Down,UP} with gnome-keybindings-properties.I'm loading mactel's nvidia_bl module which creates /sys/class/backlight/nvidia_backlight and from there I can just adjust brightness by editing the corresponding file.
I've installed Ubuntu 10.10 on my Macbook Pro 6,2 and try as I might can't change the brightness of my screen whatsoever. I cant use "echo 100> /sys/devices/virtual/backlight/nvidia_backlight/brightness" because the folder does not exist. Pommed, when run using "sudo pommed -d" complains with "Failed to access brightness node: No such file or directory".
I have the mbp-nvidia-bl driver installed *only* (removed nvidia-bli because I had seen in other threads that the two conflicted). I've tried searching the forums and the web but nothing is helping me so far. Biggest roadblock for me using ubuntu is having the headache of using a much to dim screen(or currently a much too bright screen)
I have a white Macbook 7,1 and am running 11.04 beta 1. I have worked out almost everything, sound being the main thing that didn't work. The one thing I don't have working is my brightness control -- my laptop always displays at 100%. I tried installing pommed and the dkms package from the Mactel PPA, but nothing works yet. The wiki hasn't been updated to 7,1 for Maverick, let alone Natty.
My MacBookPro5,5 (also known as the June 2009 Unibody MBP) is having brightness problems. Usually, with OOTB Ubuntu, I can control the brightness flawlessly with the keyboard keys labeled F1 and F2 with no problems once I install the nvidia_bl driver. Pommed improves the experience, giving me keyboard brightness.
Since installing yesterday, the brightness control randomly stopped working. Xev reports that the brightness up and down keys return a keycode (whereas F7 - F12, the playback and volume keys do not; both sets control their respective stuff natively)... this shouldn't happen. nvidia_bl is loading properly according to dmesg; so this problem is baffling.
The Gnome brightness applet does not work, nor does auto dimming. The applet displays a helpfully-apt red circle-with-slash mark. "echo x | sudo tee -a /sys/class/backlight/nvidia_backlight/brightness" still works to change the brightness manually. I can get the Gnome brightness working by manually changing the brightness, killing gnome-power-daemon, and then restarting it via the terminal in no-daemon mode.
I've got a Macbook Air and a verified 9.10 liveCD in the external superdrive. I can successfully boot to the CD, but when I choose "try ubuntu without installing", all I get is a blinking cursor in the upper-left of the screen forever. Any idea why it won't start? CD works fine on my Dell, that's why I say it's verified.
Today i went ahead and installed ubuntu on my windows desktop pc. I tryed the live cd and tested it out and everything was fine i then installed it using wubi. I then wanted to install it to my macbook ( bought in june 2009 ) and i booted the live cd and chose try ubuntu without any change to your computer. It booted a black screen with a white _ at the top then the screen went white and did nothing. I tryed it several times and nothing happend. I then said ok il maybe just try install it through wubi on my bootcamp partition and it all went fine until i got to the windows bootloader and chose ubuntu, it camp up finishing linux installation and where its meant to change and show the ubuntu symbol after ( i know because i've installed ubuntu on the pc) the screen went white. Nothing.
I have a first generation Macbook that shipped with Tiger. I don't often use the os x partition anymore, as I installed Windows XP on a 15 gig partition back when bootcamp was still in beta and I normally use that when I'm on my laptop. Since Tiger is rather old and the only reason I would want to upgrade to leopard is to have access to bootcamp again (they disabled access to the bootcamp application in os x, but I can still boot into windows), I have been thinking about wiping out my os x installation and using ubuntu instead. Does anyone have any thoughts on the pros and cons of totally removing os x?
The main reason I hesitate to just jump in and do it is because if I decide to install os x again I won't be able to install bootcamp again, unless I buy leopard. If I wipe out os x and install ubuntu, will I still be able to access windows in the same way? Windows uses bootcamp drivers to run properly, so I have never quite been sure if it is pulling something off of the os x partition or if it is totally standalone.
I have just installed the latest Ubuntu 10.4 LTS on my Macbook Pro and the one thing I cannot get to work no matter how much i try the fixes and suggestions they do not work. I have the volume controls, even the ones on the keyboard work but there is just no audio what so ever.
I get through the install just fine till the end Iv tryed twice. When i get to the "Who Am I" screen i fill out all the info the "Forward" Button doesn't light up, it keeps on installing till "Ready when you are" and then i'm kinda stuck.. I can go back to past screens and edit the info and stuff but thats it can't move on.
When I installed I noticed no sound was emanating from my computer and a red light coming out the headphone jack. s there any reason why there wouldn't be any working sound? Everything else seems to be working fine. I installed the additional drivers but the only ones listed were graphics and wireless.
Introduction: I wrote a very extensive and quantified tutorial and informational guide aiming to upgrade the latent information from the wiki's on MacBook Pro 5,2. An accidental toe tap ended with me bumping my head and pressing the X button on firefox. What happen had to be 1 out of a billionth of a chance. So this version will be simple and to the point, until I can muster enough patience to detail it all out again. Please correct any errors.
sudo apt-get install pommed - To get backlight keyboard working. sudo apt-get install cheese - To get iSight working. sudo apt-get install lirc - to get remote working (tested in XBMC) sudo apt-get install bluemon - Pairs Mighty Mouse and Wireless Keyboard (optional)
I have installed it on my Macbook Pro 5.5 via rEFIt+ and the install works well except for the lack of sound. I've seen this issue posted about on the forums and I've followed the advice posted here as best I can with my limited knowledge. Terminal didn't recognise the aptitude (command not found). I guess that may be due to an older build of Ubuntu being used in the example?
I have downloaded the 64 bit iso and burned the CD-ROM per the instructions. The CD is verified. When I boot the mac, holding down the C key, I get a menu of options relating to Ubuntu. If I choose the trial run from CD then the CD drive starts up but the screen goes blank and I end up with just a blinking underline cursor in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Does anyone known if one can, and if so how, to boot the live CD on a Macbook Pro 5,2?
The wiki says there is a way to install from usb but I can't get it to work on my Macbook Air 3,2 (the Nov 2010 revision, not the one from last week).
My goal is to dual-boot OS X and Ubuntu, but I can't get the Ubuntu installer to boot. I've tried a lot of variations on the instructions I've found, so I get the feeling I'm probably missing something fundamental.
I installed refit and used BootCamp to partition the drive. I downloaded desktop/alternate and i386/amd64 isos. I tried to follow the instructions to use unetbootin on OS X to install the ISOs to my USB drive, but neither drive that I connect appears in the "Drive:" selector when on OS X. I used usb-creator-gtk and unetbootin on an Unbuntu machine to try each of the four ISOs.
When I try to boot the Air from the USB drive, I got a few different types of failure:
gpt, single fat partition, unetbootin -> alternate amd64 result: "Non-system disk" "Press any key to reboot" mbr, single fat, unetbootin -> alternate amd64 result: black screen, fan runs at 100% after a minute or two
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I tried dd'ing a disk image to my new partition as described here and here with the desktop amd64 and i386 images, got a few different errors - once syslinux complaining "Error: No configuration file found" when the drive I dd'd from wasn't properly unmounted before bringing it to the Air, once I chose the drive in refit, refit displayed the single logo, and it never booted, and once I got an error I didn't copy down about needing a boot floppy.
Has anyone successfully booted Ubuntu from USB key on the Air? Exactly how did you prepare which image?
