Volume keys will not work, IBM Thinkpad T42

[fredy_sanchez11]

Hi everybody,

I am new to Linux and I am very happy with it ; however, I have an issue with my laptop that I'd like to solve. Fedora 11 has detected everything in my T42 except for the volume up/down and mute keys. I tried to fix this from System, Preferences, Keyboard Shortcuts but when I press those keys nothing happens; Fedora does not recognize those keys at all. Any ideas? Thanks for your time and your help.

[David Batson]

Have you installed tpb? These keys work on my T42 with F11. I wrote a guide for Mandriva, and much of it applies to Fedora.

http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?t=78496

There is this addendum for F11.
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=228242

[fredy_sanchez11]

Thank you David. Now, how do you install thinkpad-acpi-0.23-20091010_v2.6.31.3.patch.gz on Fedora 11? This is what I tried:

[]$ su root
Password:
[]# yum install thinkpad-acpi-0.23-20091010_v2.6.31.3.patch.gz
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
Setting up Install Process
No package thinkpad-acpi-0.23-20091010_v2.6.31.3.patch.gz available.
Nothing to do
[]# yum install ibm-acpi-0.11-1mdk.noarch.rpm
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
Setting up Install Process
No package ibm-acpi-0.11-1mdk.noarch.rpm available.
Nothing to do
[]# exit
exit
[]$

[fredy_sanchez11]

I did install the Thinkpad button support utility [tpb-0.6.4-11.fc11(i586)]. However, it did not do anything for me.

[jbkt23]

Check this thread out. This question was asked two days ago.

http://fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=232736

[fredy_sanchez11]

Thank you jbkt23 . This finally fixed it for me:

echo 0xffffffff > /proc/acpi/ibm/hotkey

Who needs Microsoft?

[fredy_sanchez11]

BTW, is there a way to make echo 0xffffffff > /proc/acpi/ibm/hotkey stick after a reboot? I run the command and the keys work but as soon as I reboot they stop working again until I type the command.

[Hlingler]

[]# yum install thinkpad-acpi-0.23-20091010_v2.6.31.3.patch.gz

YUM can only install RPMs (*.rpm) packages, not tarballs, patches, nor the like (*gz, *.tar.gz, *.tar.bz2, etc.). By default, it will look in all enabled repos, and try to resolve dependencies.

yum install ibm-acpi-0.11-1mdk.noarch.rpm

Therefore, YUM will find no Madriva RPMs in enabled repos, and attempting to 'localinstall' and/or force such non-Fedora RPMs could cause serious problems (or you might get lucky...).

BTW, is there a way to make echo 0xffffffff > /proc/acpi/ibm/hotkey stick after a reboot?

Place the command in file /etc/rc.d/rc.local, on it's own new line. Note that editing of this file requires root user (aka "Super User", "Administrator") privilege.

V

[David Batson]

Sorry I didn't get back sooner. I was working on some other things. I guess I threw you a bit of a red herring.

FYI, thinkpad-acpi is included in the Fedora 11 kernel. No need to install it or ibm-acpi. It is handled by HAL if I am not mistaken. I can't boot Fedora just now to verify anything else specific to Fedora.

I had most all the hotkeys on my T42 working in Fedora 11, including the volume and mute buttons. I didn't remember specifically what I did (in Fedora vs Mandriva) when I posted earlier. After looking over this thread, I believe I used the same solution from the link posted by jbkt23 to get started, then went from there.

[Robert2]

Originally Posted by David Batson

Sorry I didn't get back sooner. I was working on some other things. I guess I threw you a bit of a red herring.

FYI, thinkpad-acpi is included in the Fedora 11 kernel. No need to install it or ibm-acpi. It is handled by HAL if I am not mistaken. I can't boot Fedora just now to verify anything else specific to Fedora.

I had most all the hotkeys on my T42 working in Fedora 11, including the volume and mute buttons. I didn't remember specifically what I did (in Fedora vs Mandriva) when I posted earlier. After looking over this thread, I believe I used the same solution from the link posted by jbkt23 to get started, then went from there.

Indeed volume and mute keys work just fine in F11, but there is not OSD. For that all you need to do is install the tpb rpm, and reboot. And it will also give you OSD for things like Backlight. Starting with the 60 models (e.g. T60) tpb is no longer needed for backlight OSD as it is being handled by the ACPI backlight driver.

yum install tpb

The problem with the ThinkPads prior to the recent 2,3,4,500 models is that you have 2 volume controls. A software volume and a hardware volume control that operate independently. There has been talk that we might see a filter driver at some point that will sort out these problems as part of a newer thinkpad-acpi driver.

In any case, it is not suggested to mess with the hotkey mask.

[fredy_sanchez11]

Thank you everybody for your tips and help. My problem is now solved and works after every reboot. To get there I installed tpm and added echo 0xffffffff > /proc/acpi/ibm/hotkey to /etc/rc.d/rc.local as suggested by Hlingler. To edit rc.local as root I used gedit. Thanks again!

[jbkt23]

Just a follow up regarding the mute button. I found a solution to enabling the indicator on the panel to show the mute condition. It was posted somewhere else that I don't remember where.

Add the following to the kernel boot parameters in grub.conf:

acpi_osi="Linux"

so the kernel line would look like this:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.x86_64 ro root=UUID=f62b477a-5160-450e-814c-7d77f3621d8d rhgb quiet acpi_osi="Linux"