Shut Off LCD Screen

Yep, that was the problem: the file needed to be made into an executable. Works fine now. Thanks a lot for working with me to get this to work.

Just got another questions for you. Earlier, you mentioned that you had a similar laptop to mine. Where you able to get the buttons, such as the function keys, mute and volume buttons to work?

I have a DELL Inspiron 5150 and I also would like to be able to shutoff the LCD backlight. I have noticed that on full brightness this can get quite hot, and even on lowest brightness i dont feel comfortable shutting the lid with the power still on.

The prob is that i dont have a radeon card. Is there an equivalent for nvidia cards, or will radeontool work with the nvidia card too?

Also for reference, when i ran 'acpi_listen' at the prompt and closed/opened the lid several times nothing was reported. I dont have a lid "button" (at least not that i can see), although my last laptop did. I think the Inspiron model has this button inside the lid hinges, or perhaps in side the lid locking mechanism.

do you have acpi compiled in the kernel and does it see the lid switch? best way may be to type

dmesg | grep LID

what i get is

tfunicron@debian:~$ dmesg | grep LID
ACPI: Lid Switch [LID]

or what lies in /proc/acpi/button

To TFMegatron,

Well back from trying my idea of using an older linux install on another drive. Did an old suse and redhat 9. Both turn off the screen and back on. Unfortunely niether work like my setup. There is no /proc/acpi or acpi_listen. From Redhat version I can tell APM and ACPI are there. ACPI is modules and none were loaded. I am guessing it was using APM.

But for me when I press the lid button it sends one line of output to acpi_listen, but when I release no responce. So I created the scripts from your earlier post and now when I press the lid button the screen turns off. But of course when released it does not turn back on.

Just looking for some input from you. Know anything about APM?

What I am going to work on now is compare the old linux install to the current setup. I made copies of most /proc from the old install.

Also work on the sleep option and see if I can make that turn on the screen. Since it seems to work. I have some sllep scripts and see if I make it work.

For some info here is my acpi_listen output:
[crusher58@lcomp58 ~]$ acpi_listen
button/lid LID0 00000080 00000001
button/lid LID0 00000080 00000002
button/lid LID0 00000080 00000003
button/lid LID0 00000080 00000004
ac_adapter AC 00000080 00000000
ac_adapter AC 00000080 00000001
button/lid LID0 00000080 00000005
button/lid LID0 00000080 00000006
button/lid LID0 00000080 00000007
button/lid LID0 00000080 00000008

Output of /var/log/acpid
[Sat Jan 1 09:04:18 2005] exiting
[Sat Jan 1 09:04:19 2005] starting up
[Sat Jan 1 09:04:19 2005] 1 rule loaded
[Sat Jan 1 09:04:22 2005] received event "button/lid LID0 00000080 0000000a"
[Sat Jan 1 09:04:22 2005] executing action "/etc/acpi/actions/lidbtn.sh"
[Sat Jan 1 09:04:22 2005] BEGIN HANDLER MESSAGES
[Sat Jan 1 09:04:22 2005] END HANDLER MESSAGES
[Sat Jan 1 09:04:22 2005] action exited with status 0
[Sat Jan 1 09:04:22 2005] completed event "button/lid LID0 00000080 0000000a"
[Sat Jan 1 09:04:49 2005] received event "button/sleep SLPB 00000080 00000001"
[Sat Jan 1 09:04:49 2005] completed event "button/sleep SLPB 00000080 00000001"
[Sat Jan 1 09:04:52 2005] received event "button/sleep SLPB 00000080 00000002"
[Sat Jan 1 09:04:52 2005] completed event "button/sleep SLPB 00000080 00000002"
[root@lcomp58 ~]#

Thank you for your time and help. Actually I getting closer than ever before.
Brian1
" Google the Linux way @ http://www.google.com/linux "

TFMegatron,

yes i do have acpi compiled with the kernel, and there is a LID button (software) but no lid button (hardware) which is what i meant to say in my last post. but like i said, when i 'acpi_listen' and close/open the lid a few times, nothing is output to the screen.

However, when i check the state (ie cat /proc/acpi/button/lid/LID/state) i can get a 'closed' or 'open' as the case maybe (i had to hook up an external keyboard to execute the command when the lid was down).

So in summary, acpi_listen outputs nothing, but the state is reported correctly.

adriaanbw,

I found this pdf file that mentions something about loading acpi senisors. Its mentioned on page 4. The document is for slackware but could probally be applied to your distro of linux.

http://www.amitysolutions.com.au/doc...0-technote.pdf

Hope this helps.
Robert2513

adraanbw,

I have searched and searched and found people with the same problems but no solutions. I will continue looking though. See if it this works.

In your XF86Config-4 or whatever you use in the monitor section add the line:

Option DPMS "true"

restart the comp and in a console type:

xset dpms force off

does that shut off the backlight?

Brain1,

You should compile the acpi stuff into the kernel and not as modules. Say yes to them. Maybe that might be your problem and also make sure you don't have apm compiled in or as modules as they are not compatible.

To TFMegatron

No, compiling all in the kernel does not help, been there tried that. In an above post I installed redhat 9 and its default install made acpi as modules. My current setup has all acpi in the kernel and no apm. I have tried both ways with the last kernels I have compiled ( 2.6.7.* - 2.6.10.* ). Currently 2.6.10-rc2. Either way makes no difference.

I had a brain storm this morning and now have it working. Not quite the norm but does work and only involves the lid button. I made 3 scripts, each called lidbtn.sh, lidbtnon.sh, and lidbtnoff.sh. Here is what each one has.

Contents of lidbtnon.sh

 #!/bin/sh
# Turn on LCD Screen
/usr/sbin/radeontool light on

# Replace Lidbtn.sh script with lidbtnoff.sh LCD Off script
cp /etc/acpi/actions/lidbtnoff.sh /etc/acpi/actions/lidbtn.sh

Contents of lidbtnoff.sh

#!/bin/sh
# Trun off LCD Screen
/usr/sbin/radeontool light off

# Replace Lidbtn.sh script with lidbtnon.sh LCD On script
cp /etc/acpi/actions/lidbtnon.sh /etc/acpi/actions/lidbtn.sh

Contents of lidbtn.sh is always changing. Will either be the lidbtnon or lidbtnoff script.

Since I only detect the press of the lid button and not the release, all I have to do is close the lid and the screen goes off. The script copies the lidbtnon.sh to lidbtn.sh. Now I open the lid and press the lid button. The screen comes on and then replaces lidbtn.sh with lidbtnoff.sh. Also added a copy command to /etc/rc.local to copy lidbtnoff.sh to lidbtn.sh so it is always ready. Same as my mute button

Very simply and so far works great. I wish I knew how to write this as a single script. I do the exact same thing to mute and unmute my volume with a single button. Have it here at http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...388#post536388 .

Now to add stuff like suspend pcmcia card slots and anything else I can think of. If you have any ides I would be happy to hear. Will look into the suspend script and see if that could help here. If you have a working suspend script I would be interrested in seeing it.

Again thank you to everybody for the help. Simplicity is the simplest.
Brian1
" Google the Linux way @ http://www.google.com/linux "

TFMegatron,

So the DPMS option was already in my 'xorg.conf' and yes the command 'xset dpms force off' does indeed shutoff the back light as far i can tell. After being off for some time the base of the LCD screen feels cool to the touch (normally hot if LCD is at full brightness).

So now I guess the next thing i need to do is put this in a script and attach it to the LID event. One question though, is there someway of ensure that it will stay off?? By that I mean, sure I can turn if off, but it comes back on if the mouse is moved, a key is pressed etc just like a screensaver.

Adriaanbw,

Well I too first tried this before I found that radeontool. As far as I know you cannot make it stay off. I think this command is part of a screensaver. I also tried using it in a script but had problems with .Xauthority. It would say things like:

Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

I tried copying the .Xauthority file to root's directory to give root authority to use the X monitor. That would then give root authority but still the script had the same problems. I even tried running the script not under root but under my user name. That also failed. So unless I can find a tool or setting I don't feel I will be much more help to you. sorry. By the way what video card do you have. Is it a nVidia GO 5200? Just curious.

To robert2513 glad that worked. Happy to finally be of some help.

TFMegatron,

Yes I do believe it is an nVidia GO 5200. For the moment I can probably live with the fact that it won't stay off. I am working on getting a suspend function working on my notebook which will ultimately replace the need for this temporary fix.

Of course, from what i have read around the web there is not much hope that I can suspend my Inspiron 5150 (not APM support).

Sometimes you can set this in your BIOS. If you can't configure it there try this:

Go to: Applications --> Control Center, then click on 'Power Control' and 'Laptop Battery', go to the tab 'ACPI Config' (all the way on the right), and if the check boxes in that section are not usable (light gray), then go to the bottom and click 'Setup Helper Application''. After that is setup, close the Control Center, and then start it up again.

Go back to 'Power Control' and 'Laptop Battery' and go to the tab 'Button Actions' and if under 'Lid Switch Closed' 'Off' is not selected, then select it.

That is unfortunatly the extent of my knowledge on this subject, but hopefully I'm helpful!

mr_maximum,

Are you using GNOME or KDE? I don't have the 'Control Center' item under the 'Applications' menu. Do you or anyone else know how I can get to that utilitiy? It sounds somewhat promising.

I will check my BIOS when I shutdown next, but from what I have seen about other DELL machines, they don't support APM. But I will check to be sure.

I notice that your distro is FC2. I am on FC3 and perhaps that explains why I cannot see the 'Control Center'.

Ha, yeah I should change that distro thing, I recently updated my laptop to FC 3.
I use KDE, one of the reasons being that it has the great control center app, which is unfortunatley KDE exclusive. I logged in to GNOME, and I noticed that it didn't show my battery monitor, which by right-clicking can turn off my monitor and do other power related tasks. This program is KLaptop, part of the control center. I'm not sure how to configure acpi in GNOME, but it is easy in KDE.

So I'll research acpi usage in GNOME, and otherwise, I'd just recommend using KDE. So try the previous procedure that I described in KDE if you have it, just to see if it works, then try to get it to work in GNOME.

OK, also in GNOME, I tried closing my screen and it did turn off. Maybe this is because I configured it in KDE, but probably not? Are you using a 2.6.9 Kernel? It is the default for Fedora, but I just have to make sure. And make sure you use acpi and not apm, I never got apm or a 2.4 kernel to work right with my laptop battery. If you have to, recompile the kernel with acpi support, but Fedora 3 normally comes with it already working. OK, now to research.