Re: FreeBSD on macbook & backlight module

From: Eric Anholt <eric_at_anholt.net>
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:34:51 -0800
On Mon, 2008-01-14 at 16:01 +0000, Rui Paulo wrote:
> I have the backlight module ready to be committed (needs approval
> first), but it would be great if we could create a general backlight
> API. I have some initial ideas, but needs a bit more thought. 
> 
> Also, xrandr on (7.3 with "intel" video driver) seems to be able to
> control the LCD backlight on MacBooks, but it seems bogus:
> 
> % xrandr --prop
> Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 800, maximum 1280 x 1280
> VGA disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
> LVDS connected 1280x800+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 286mm x 179mm
>         EDID_DATA:
>                 00ffffffffffff0006105b9c00000000
>                 0e100103801d12780a87f594574f8c27
>                 27505400000001010101010101010101
>                 010101010101bc1b00a0502017303020
>                 36001eb3100000190000000100061020
>                 00000000000000000a20000000fe004c
>                 544e31333357310000000a20000000fc
>                 00436f6c6f72204c43440a20202000c6
>         BACKLIGHT: 296 (0x00000128) range:  (0,296)
> 
> I don't really know about how exactly this control works, because:
> 
> 1) the range is wrong.
> 2) setting values with xrandr --output LVDS --set BACKLIGHT <value>,
> doesn't seem to be doing anything good. It just sets a high and low
> value for the backlight brigthness.
> 
> If anyone knows anything about this, I would appreciate if you could
> step forward.
> 
> There's another problem: xv (try it with mplayer -vo xv) seems to be
> setting the backlight value on initialization. So, if you start Xorg
> with backlight value of 50, then reduce it to 20 and after that try
> to play a video with mplayer, the backlight value seems to come back
> to 50. There are very strange interactions between xrandr and my own
> backlight control kernel module. It would be great to disable xrandr's
> backlight control, at least.
> 
> Regards.
> --
> Rui Paulo
> I have the backlight module ready to be committed (needs approval
> first), but it would be great if we could create a general backlight
> API. I have some initial ideas, but needs a bit more thought. 
> 
> Also, xrandr on (7.3 with "intel" video driver) seems to be able to
> control the LCD backlight on MacBooks, but it seems bogus:
> 
> % xrandr --prop
> Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 800, maximum 1280 x 1280
> VGA disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
> LVDS connected 1280x800+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 286mm x 179mm
>         EDID_DATA:
>                 00ffffffffffff0006105b9c00000000
>                 0e100103801d12780a87f594574f8c27
>                 27505400000001010101010101010101
>                 010101010101bc1b00a0502017303020
>                 36001eb3100000190000000100061020
>                 00000000000000000a20000000fe004c
>                 544e31333357310000000a20000000fc
>                 00436f6c6f72204c43440a20202000c6
>         BACKLIGHT: 296 (0x00000128) range:  (0,296)
> 
> I don't really know about how exactly this control works, because:
> 
> 1) the range is wrong.
> 2) setting values with xrandr --output LVDS --set BACKLIGHT <value>,
> doesn't seem to be doing anything good. It just sets a high and low
> value for the backlight brigthness.

That xrandr --prop output may be broken.  My xlib fu is weak.

> If anyone knows anything about this, I would appreciate if you could
> step forward.
> 
> There's another problem: xv (try it with mplayer -vo xv) seems to be
> setting the backlight value on initialization. So, if you start Xorg
> with backlight value of 50, then reduce it to 20 and after that try
> to play a video with mplayer, the backlight value seems to come back
> to 50. There are very strange interactions between xrandr and my own
> backlight control kernel module. It would be great to disable xrandr's
> backlight control, at least.

I use xbacklight -set <percentage> to control backlight.  Your issue
with it flipping to only a high/low value may have been the one jbarnes
fixed in git recently (apparently a low bit got redefined on us).

-- 
Eric Anholt                             anholt_at_FreeBSD.org
eric_at_anholt.net                         eric.anholt_at_intel.com


Received on Tue Jan 15 2008 - 20:42:58 UTC

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