Laptop TFT monitor - brightness level is not saved

Please provide information about whether your using breezy or dapper. On dapper we have gnome-screensaver if you have that file the bug against it, if not you can install it on breezy.

Thanks for your reply.

I use Dapper - and I don't think this is a gnome-screensaver issue - it's more likely a driver problem (not sure though).

Do you have gnome-power-manager --sm-disable in your System->Preferences->Session ->Startup programs
And do you have a battery logo in your notification area, which you right click it has Preferences and Hibernation and or Sleep.
Try also going into preferences and adjusting the the brightness there.

This is gnome-power-manager setting the brightness ot the maximum because you're on AC, or the lowest because you're on Battery.

It doesn't remember the previous state, which ideally it should do. Eg. everytime the "brightnessup" or "brightnessdown" key events happen, save the new current brightness.

You mean save a new policy value for that state on every adjustment... that's probably a good idea. Can you add this imformation to http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=335673 please.

This is annoying that the option ot put the luminositu to 100% is enabled bu default. In 7.04 was not. I use 7.10

Same here in Hardy 2.6.24-15, Acer Travelmate 2483

+1 on
 2.6.24-16-generic #1 SMP , Ubuntu 8.04 running on toshiba a105-s4334

+1
Toshiba A135-s4427 Hardy 2.6.24-15

Just to expand the use case of this bug report:
I (using Hardy) like having the backlight dim on idle. That means that I have the backlight at 100% and, after a period of no use, my backlight dims. That is great. When I move the mouse it increases the backlight to 80% and I have to increase it with the hotkeys.

This process occurs every period of "idle".

Same problem with latest Hardy. LCD brightness applet doesn't save settings, and it's reset to the brightest setting after each reboot. I can't find anywhere else under System to change the defaults.

The same for me.

Confirmed on Acer Extensa 5210 with 8.04 Hardy Heron

This bug is related appears in bugs #35223, #34743 & #34897.

The screen's brightness is automatically adjusted to maximum after each reboot of the system. I am using a Dell Inspiron 640m. The problem did not exist in Feisty Fawn. But after the decision to upgrade to Hardy Heron, it has surfaced.

I managed to fine-tune the LCD brightness to a greater degree by adding the 'Brightness Applet' to the Gnome Panel.
1.Right-click a specified location on the Gnome Panel and select 'Add to Panel...'
2.Select 'Brightness Applet'.

To achieve 7 adjustable levels of brightness on the function keys (instead of the usual 3), and to keep the LCD brightness from being set at the maximum after every reboot:
1.In a terminal, type “gksudo gedit”.
2.Open the file “/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist”.
3.Add a new line “blacklist video”.
4.Reduce brightness to mimimum (or desired level).
5.Reboot.

I also have a similar problem on Hardy. When the computer idle the backlight level is reduced to the minimum, but when moving the mouse the backlight level is always set to half level... I would prefer it is set back to the level I set it to (with acpi keys) before the computer idle. the acpi backlignt/brightness level should be saved and restored to this level both after idle and reboot.

Same here in Hardy 2.6.24-21-generic with Dell Inspiron 1525.

Same here in Hardy on the MSI Wind. If I leave the laptop for a few minutes, the screen darkens, but when the laptop is reactivated, the screen reverts to maximum brightness ignoring the settings it previously had.

works fine after update (Inspiron 1525, Hardy)

Similar problem in ubuntu intrepid as Goldenear indicated, dell lattitude 410 here.

setting the brightness using Power Management preferences did not help.
I set from 100% down to 40% for obvious observe, but the brightness seemed to be the same after restart.
I'm using Intrepid.

Same as above - Dell Inspiron 1525 - Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy). Things were OK until I changed System->Preferences->Power Management settings via ScreenSaver. Screen dims after 5 seconds of inactivity (at Power Management its set to "Never"). Brightness setting is not restored. Work-around of adding the LCD Brightness App is OK for now - justt setting it back to 100%. Still, this is a dose of weird.

Same here with Intrepid on a Thinkpad T400 and a Thinkpad X200.
Brightness is 100% after reboot and also after closing the screen.

Confirming with Intrepid on a MacbookPro 3rd Gen Santa Rosa.

Setting a medium brightness level (about 50%) and suspending&resuming gives me a 100% bright display.
The values provided by my brightness driver (applesmc) are still at the medium value (50%), but gnome-power-manager ignores them.
If I then press the brightness-up button, the screen brightness jumps down to about 60%.

Brightness on reboot is always 100%

Same here with Intrepid on a Dell Inspiron 1525

IBM R40e Intrepid, no brightness control at all. Hot keys don't work and neither does brightness applet. On power or battery always a dim screen :-(

I'm on Toshiba L350D-10i Laptop

When I install kde-guidance-powermanager and I reboot, brightness can be set with the keys on the keyboard. Second reboot results in the brightness keys being unusable again and brightness can't be set. All following reboots leave the brightness keys unusable.

I made a dmesg from the first reboot when it worked and I also made a dmesg from the second reboot when the keys didn't work. Comparing both didn't show any big differences. I still have the dmesg's so if anyone wants them to have a quick look at it, feel free to ask.

This bug was not present in Hardy, but it appeared again in Intrepid (at least in my case).

ACAdapter: Present
Architecture: i386
Battery: Not Present
CPUScaling: Present
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
LaptopPanel: Present
MachineType: Dell Inc. Inspiron 1525
Package: gnome-power-manager 2.24.2-2ubuntu8
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcCmdLine: root=UUID=27a42538-c931-4bb2-b8e5-9f826d0425c8 ro quiet splash
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.28-12.43-generic
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-12-generic i686
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare

ACAdapter: Present
Architecture: i386
Battery: Not Present
CPUScaling: Present
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
LaptopPanel: Present
MachineType: Dell Inc. Inspiron 1525
Package: gnome-power-manager 2.24.2-2ubuntu8
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcCmdLine: root=UUID=27a42538-c931-4bb2-b8e5-9f826d0425c8 ro quiet splash
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.28-12.43-generic
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-12-generic i686
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare

Amr Hassan is the reporter of one of the duplicates, he s able to reproduce this bug with jaunty.

lucck filed a duplicate report at bug #291742 where he did some good debugging that I'd like to share here.

"Afer power up display backlight is always set to 100% light, independent of brightness settings in previous session. I detected that problem is in acpi kernel driver video.ko and gnome-power-manager. I use ubuntu 8.10 with kernel 2.6.27-7-generic on 64-bit platform. This is a regression bug, because in previous version ubuntu 8.04LTS display backlight works ok.

Aditional comments:

I detected that acpi/video.ko kernel 2.6.24 driver in ubuntu 8.04 didn't work and backlight was controlled only by ACPI bios, because /proc/bus/acpi/video/*/backlights always return that backlight is not supported. In kernel 2.6.27 driver return correct backlight values:

cat /proc/acpi/video/C085/C144/brightness
levels: 100 51 30 37 44 51 58 65 72 79 86 93 100
current: 65

New video driver trying to get current backlight level from ACPI BQI object but it is optional ACPI function. When ACPI does not support BQI object driver will set back-light to maximum value. Pls. see code video.c bellow:

if (device->cap._BQC)
            device->backlight->props.brightness =
                acpi_video_get_brightness(device->backlight);
        else
            device->backlight->props.brightness =
                device->backlight->props.max_brightness;
        backlight_update_status(device->backlight);

When ACPI BQI is not supported video.ko or gnome-power-manager should save and restore current backlight value from config file.

Workaround:

Currently I workaround this problem by change kernel driver video.ko to set 50% backlight when BQI object is not found (Pls see patch bellow). I also changed gnome-power-manager settings by run gconf-editor and set following configuration values in /apps/gnome-power/manager/backlight by changing keys values to:

brightness_ac = 50
brightness_battery = 30
brightness_dim_battery = 30

but it is obvious workaround."

I think, that there are some issues mixed!

To make it clear: The current brightness level is not saved at all on shut down.
The setting is read out of System -> Preferences -> Power Management -> "Set display brightness to:"
Please set this parameter to a value you like. On start up the brightness will always be as you set there.
If not, this is really a bug. So please open a new bug with detailed description of your laptop.

If you like, that the current brightness level at shutdown is remembered on startup, please set the importance to wishlist.

Someone explained a third issue: When laptop is idle it dims the brightness, when in active use again the brightness management is confused.
If this is your problem please search related bugs for this problem.

A few things here, in response.

1. My bug report, Bug #357107, was marked as a duplicate of this bug. It contains a detailed description of my computer (MacBook 5.1).

2. "Set display brightness to" is completely ignored on bootup. For example, I have it set to 21%, but on bootup, the brightness is *always* 100%.

3. This is not a wishlist item. The behavior of GNOME and Ubuntu prior to 9.04 was to remember the brightness setting from the last session prior to shutdown.

@jango - thanks for helping and putting this with 100 paper cuts.

You are right that there has been a little mix up during reporting, but this is a real bug and this is the correct place to discuss the bug where:
resetting your laptop resets brightness to 100% regardless of your settings.

This bug occurs across many laptops, so I don't think it is necessary to file a new report with information on each laptop.

In fact, this bug has been traced to the ACPI where the ACPI object for brightness is an optional function not implemented by every laptop's ACPI. If your laptop does not have this optional function, you will see this bug. This allows us the work around listed above and a starting point to fix this bug.

ok... i just didn't know, for what reason you would use this bug, because there were things mixed up.
I had only the problem, that brightness was on lowest level on startup, but this was repaired then.

However - it should be possible to fix this problem in 100 paper cuts, because this behaviour is really annoying.

Brightness level should be as it was on shut down, or as it was set in the preferences - and nothing else.

Thank you for bringing this bug to our attention. Unfortunately a paper cut should be a small usability issue that affects many people and is quick and easy to fix. I'm afraid this bug can't be addressed as part of this project.
A paper cut is a minor usability annoyance that an average user would encounter on his/her first day of using a new installation of Ubuntu 9.10.

guys I don't now why I'm subsribed, but I tried to unsubsribe lots of times and every time next day I'm subscribed again.
Any I deas what I do wrongly?

the same happens on my laptop Aspire 5630-6091. I use 9.04
I would like to maintain the brightness value (that I've ajusted) after reboot, but I don't know how to do this.

Also happens with 9.04 on Dell D610 Latitude.

To be more precise, it doesn't happen with startup, it happens with login. Doesn't occur when resuming from hibernate.

I'm experiencing this bug too on Ubuntu 9.10:
$ lsb_release -dr
Description: Ubuntu karmic (development branch)
Release: 9.10

My accidentally duplicated question to gdm developers:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gdm/+question/86315

I see it even when running System -> Log out.. -> Switch User, with power-manager daemon running in session.

bug #392122 is a similar issue with a clear description

This bug persist in Ubuntu 10.10, in all laptops that I used.
Best regards.

This bug also persists on my laptop Dell Inspirion N5010.

OMG, this bug haven't been fixed for 5 years that has passed from the first report, this is hilarious, seems that it won;t be fixed anytime soon. :(

This bug affects me too:

Sony Vaio VPCF12M1E
Ubuntu 11.04
Kernel 2.6.38-11-generic
Gnome 2.32.1
Nvdia-current

I support Vlad's remark and I'm desperately waiting for a fix. I'm working as a sales rep presenting at customer's premises usually on battery power, and it is more than annoying.

It affects me too. Too much brightness is not good for eyes and laptop power.

I was too early to comment. If I put

echo 2 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness

in /etc/rc.local (before exit 0) it seems to work.

As a workaround, this could be easily fixed by running the following command just before shutdown:
cat /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness > /etc/whatever

And running the following command on boot:
cat /etc/whatever > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness

Using upstart, it shouldn't be too difficult to do...

Having the same trouble with 12.04 LTS. I didn't have any issue running Maverick (10.10). The screen brightness on my Toshiba L-300-D laptop changes to full brightness with every reboot. In order to resolve an overheating problem I turn the acpi off at boot using "acpi_osi=" on the linux line in grub. When I check /sys/class/back.ight/acpi_ideo0/brightness it shows 0 which is where I want it.

I found xbacklight utility in the repository. This utility doesn't require root so I've created a link in startup application list.

Hey guys,

I've just written an Upstart job that you can find at https://github.com/mondalaci/screen-brightness-upstart-job

It makes Ubuntu remember the screen brightness level across reboots. I think something like this would be great to be integrated into Ubuntu by default.

Please give it a try and let me know what you think.

Laslo, tried the script on my Toshiba L300D laptop but no joy. I don't think it's the script though. I have to run acpi_osi= on the linux line of grub to get my fans to work which disables acpi and thus, the script. I'll keep trying other solutions until I find something that works.

Laszlo, I re-enabled 3d Unity on my system to test whether recent patches might have fixed the gpu problems I was having. For now 3D Unity seems to be working again. I do not know why but your brightness settings script worked fine in the 3D mode and my Toshiba L300D now remembers the settings. Thank you very much for posting the fix.

Thomas,

I'm glad my script finally worked for you. Given that my script uses ACPI through sysfs I'm not surprised to see that ACPI-related kernel tweaking can mess it up.

Sorry for the horribly late reply, I wasn't subscribed to this bug. Now I am.

Still exists in 12.10 at this point of time.

Yes, although Laszlo Monda's script works very well for me (thanks by the way). So, it's just a matter of will from ubuntu developers now...

The issue still persists....I'm using dell studio laptop....in each restart, the system forgets the screen brightness...so I had to manually set it always...Hope we can expect a fix soon....

Every time I restart my notebook ASUS N76VJ, the monitors brightness has changed to the maximum possible.
Ubuntu 13.04

I have the same problem. I am using Ubuntu 12.04 32 bit OS.
Thank you.

Hi, i have the same problem since ubuntu 12.04, and right now i am using ubuntu 14.04 but the problem persist, i would like for ubuntu 14.04 this bug will be fixed

My laptop is a lenovo ideapad s406, it has

Procesador AMD® A8-4555M Quad core
Gráficos A8 Integrate AMD® Radeon™ HD 7640

Me too:

Model: HP Pavilion g4 Notebook PC (B0P14PA#AB4)
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3612QM CPU @ 2.10GHz
VGA 1: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09)
VGA 2: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Thames [Radeon HD 7500M/7600M Series] (rev ff)

Me too:

Brightness is set to maximum after a reboot or after waking up from a suspend.

Model: Thinkpad T440S

Ubuntu: 14.04 64 bit

The problem is also reported on http://askubuntu.com/questions/524524/brightness-is-reset-to-maximum-after-waking-up-from-suspend-or-lock-screen

The same on this system:
Asus UX31A
Ubuntu 14.10 64 bit