[SOLVED] Unable to dim screen brightness in Fedora 16

[kylerconway]

I just recently did a fresh install of Fedora 16 (3.1.4-1.fc16.x86_64) on my Thinkpad X120e and I'm having trouble with dimming. The function keys still seem to work, but it appears to be a software problem (the function keys worked on Fedora 15 as well, but actually lowered the brightness).

At any rate, the brightness "overlay" shows up in Gnome (3.2 on Fedora 16, right?) and lowers the brightness a single tick on the graphic (but not at all in reality). Repeatedly pressing the "lower brightness" button doesn't lower either the bar in the graphic or in reality. Moving it up only changes it in the graphic back to full.

Using the "screen" setting (GUI) and dragging the bar for brightness left and right doesn't do anything.

I also installed the "xbacklight" application and it doesn't change anything either (and exits without error).

Not sure what else to try, but I'd really like to be able to lower the brightness. Any thoughts, help appreciated. Please let me know if there is any output that would be helpful.

Thanks!

KYLE

[Skull One]

I can't really help, but I know there is a website about thinkpad. Look here for instance: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/LCD_Brightness

[kylerconway]

Thanks for the link, Skull One.

This fixed it for me: http://identi.ca/notice/86616101

Short fix: Run the following --

sudo yum reinstall bash

Thanks everyone for the help!

[audifanatic518]

Thanks Kyle, I was having the same problem with my ThinkPad T510. Worked like a charm!

[Gekoncze]

Thanks a lot I also had this problem. Now it is fixed.

[Gödel]

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common...s_after_update

Of course! screen brightness control doesn't work so reinstall bash!!

reinstalling bash is a bizarre fix for screen brightness problem, but it fixes the problem on a dell laptop here too.

[sillav]

I can update the brightness using the function keys, but changing power sources still doesn't work automagically.

[Kunal]

Thank You reinstalling bash really did help esp. for Dell laptop

[mmarotta]

a reinstall of bash didn't work for Toshiba Satellite A500. Screen at 100% brightness. WOW! someone please help me not burn my eyes out and wake the whole neighborhood with the solar energy!

[stevea]

WOW that is the strangest fix imaginable. How the F*** does a bash reinstall impact the brightness control ?
Aside from man pages and localiation files - there isn't much in bash ....

/bin/bash
/bin/sh
/etc/skel/.bash_logout
/etc/skel/.bash_profile
/etc/skel/.bashrc
/usr/bin/bashbug-64
/usr/share/doc/bash-4.2.20
/usr/share/doc/bash-4.2.20/COPYING
/usr/share/info/bash.info.gz
/usr/share/locale/af/LC_MESSAGES/bash.mo
....
/usr/share/locale/zh_TW/LC_MESSAGES/bash.mo
/usr/share/man/man1/..1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/:.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/[.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/alias.1.gz
...
/usr/share/man/man1/wait.1.gz

So how could this fix the bug ?

[JEO]

Did you follow the link in Gödel's post? There is a bug where lines are missing from /etc/shells.

[McZap]

This works for my on my w510.

Thanks!

Michel

[mmarotta]

Ok. I am new to Linux os. I've installed Fedora 16.
My screen dimming capabilities went away after an update.
I tried the reinstall of bash as suggested above.
The screen can still no longer be dimmed (it remains at 100% brightness).

Here is the /etc/shells file:
/sbin/nologin
/bin/dash
/bin/bash
/bin/sh

[JEO]

/etc/shells looks okay. Did you reboot after reinstalling bash?

[mmarotta]

I have rebooted. Several times now.