LinuxQuestions.org - Thinkpad edge sound and brightness keys stopped working

- Slackware (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/)

- - Thinkpad edge sound and brightness keys stopped working (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/thinkpad-edge-sound-and-brightness-keys-stopped-working-4175432312/)

Quote:

Originally Posted by geoslack (Post 4808618)

D1ver,
I didn't realize that you had the same xorg crashing issues as well. Did you start another thread on that? Maybe I read it last night without making the connection. Anyway, I'm back to square one on the hotkey question, although now that I have upgraded libdrm and mesa KDE apps no longer cause xorg to crash -- so far at least, knock on wood! But those elusive hotkeys remain a mystery, as they are no longer responsive after working for a little bit last night. I wonder if upgrading to slack 14 might help. Otherwise I've downloaded a couple of live OS options -- Mint and Slax to see what they do. I'll report back.

Though I also now wonder whether this whole thing might be related to the thinkpad_acpi driver which controls the hotkeys, right?

cheers!
-g

Yea there was a bit of a thread here about my X issues. I only had the X issues under Slackware 13.37. I didn't have any problems with debian 6 or ubuntu.

I don't really know what to say about the hot keys.. They would stop working on me after a short time and I'd have to use the windows bios updater utility and they'd come back. I did that dance for months and then it seems to have stopped, keys work ok for the most part.

FWIW I just tried the battery removal trick mentioned on the Lenovo forum -- turned off machine, removed battery, went for a short walk, put battery back in, rebooted and now the hot keys work again. Not a real solution, but now it seems to me more hardware/BIOS related than anything to do with linux. They seem to have dropped the ball on this one.

Oh, what bios version are you using?

mine is: 80ET61WW (2.01 )

-g

Just for fun, try plugging in a USB keyboard or even using a Bluetooth keyboard to see if the same behavior occurs.

If pulling the battery fixes it, I'm pessimistic about any software work around.

It could be the keyboard itself. Have you tried using a compressed air can between the keys with the laptop upside down?

Gently using a vacuum attachment to pull dust might also work.

The lenovo forum posts (and there are a lot of them) pretty well rule out this being a linux problem - many of the posts refer to Win7 configurations which appear to have the identical problem. All the solutions are seem to be around the bios. I have never had this problem and I may be lucky as I have an early model EDGE with an early bios version [85ET32WW (1.05)]. Problem seems to have been introduced with bios > v2?

bogzab,
yup, that was my conclusion reading those forums too, since it affects windows users too. And some people there seem to have had good experiences downgrading to earlier versions. Not a linux problem and certainly not a slackware problem! For now I am OK with taking the battery out once in a while -- it worked for me and the buttons now continue to work. If I understand what happens when you do that, there must be some stored information in the low level hardware control system that gets corrupted over time and removing the battery flushes that out. Don't know if this is really solved, but maybe this thread can be marked as such? Apologies to slackers for clogging up the forum with non-slack issues. One of the reasons I like slackware is the awesome community!

Cheers all!
-g

As long as you can replicate the hot key's function with the gui onscreen, you should be fine. I'm assuming that slackware can hibernate and change the volume etc from your desktop. In KDE, its all controlled by a gui. The other desktops should be similar.