sony laptop - keyboard backlight bizarre behaviour : not working on boot, working after sleep resume

jopopo · 05-14-2018, 05:57 PM

Hello, I would like to ask your help about the keyboard backlight of my sony vaio sve-1711x1eb, dual boot mint 18.3 xfce/win7.

I tried to put everything in the title but here is more background story.

The keyboard backlight doesn't work on boot, but works perfectly fine when i resume from sleep.

Expected/normal behaviour :
Like on win7 : press any key and it lights on for a few seconds before fading out. There is no hardware key or switch to turn it on or off or change the keyboard backlight brightness btw.

It was working fine on ubuntu-studio 12.04 and 14.04, then started to have this bizarre behaviour on ubuntu-studio 16.04 and never stopped (tried it on ubuntu-studio 17.04 as well).

Description of the problem :
the keyboard is lit on boot until the mint logo disapears, then it fades out and never turns on again.
if i enter sleep mode, and resume, then it will always work perfectly fine.

What I already tried :
changed /sys/module/sony_laptop/parameters/kbd_backlight from -1 to 1 as seen on another forum

create sony-laptop.conf with "options sony-laptop kbd_backlight=1" in modprobe.d as seen somewhere else

played with xset led commands as well.

no result.

I already asked this on a french mint forum as well as two other english forums, they didn't have a clue so one more step further !

One last word : I am very new here, but I am not a kid, I have 5+ years of using ubuntu behind me but I never had to ask anything on a linux forum, I'm not sure what to add here but please be kind to ask me any more info you'd need with the minimum direction on how to obtain them.

Please consider me a noob but I really want to learn, and I really want to fix this, even if I have to dig deep, I love this laptop.

Thank you very much for your reading of this long post and depending on the time zone, have a sweet night or a very good day.

AwesomeMachine · 05-15-2018, 06:18 PM

On your computer, controlling the keyboard backlight is problematic, because it is completely software controlled. This sounds like a kernel regression (something that worked in earlier kernels is broken in later ones).

OR, maybe modprobe.d isn't being used because of systemd. You can try to unload sony-laptop

Code:

$ modprobe -r sony-laptop

and reload it with the backlight parameter

Code:

$ modprobe sony-laptop keyboard_backlight=1

You might check /sys to see if the parameter you set with 'echo' actually changed. Sony is uncooperative with the open-source community, so it's difficult to write modules for their hardware. You might drop them an email encouraging them to make their stuff work with Linux.

jopopo · 05-17-2018, 04:35 AM

thank you very much for your reply unfortunately this is still unchanged. the fact that it will work correctly when i resume from sleep lets me hope this is somehow fixable, but as you see i'm running dry of ideas.

thank you anyway for your reply, if you have any other idea i'm taking them gladly.

jopopo · 05-20-2018, 06:01 AM

i had some time to play again with your two commands but this time after a sleep resume (so with the keyboard backlight actually working fine).
the first one has no visible effect, but the 2nd command will disable keyboard backlight again, until next sleep resume.

AwesomeMachine · 05-21-2018, 11:33 PM

Are there any error messages associated with the two commands? If the second one disables the backlight, that's a problem.

jopopo · 05-22-2018, 05:04 AM

alright really sorry i tried again and i went a bit too fast in conclusion last time.

both of your commands will give me an error 'operation not permitted'. so i tried again with sudo and this is where the second command disables the keyboard backlight. no message at all for both commands when used with sudo.

so back to my last experiment, i just resume from sleep and the keyboard backlight works fine :
i try the commands in this order to be sure to be sure : second command with sudo does nothing (that i can see, and no message), first command with sudo does nothing as well (same thing). this is only when i hit first command line with sudo, then second command line with sudo, that the keyboard backlight stops working again, and still no message.

- xfiles theme song -

rokytnji · 05-22-2018, 05:19 AM

Not sure what was suggested on the Mint forums.

If me. I would run

Code:

dmesg | tail

After a virgin bootup with the back light not working. Make a text file called boot and save it with that readout copied and pasted into it.

Then try putting into sleep.

Run

Code:

dmesg | tail

again when coming back from sleep. With the backlight working. Do the same with making a text file and saving it and naming it sleep.

Look for clues on what is different that get get's turned on and enabled between my 2 saved files.

If my idea don't work. No harm. No foul.

AwesomeMachine · 05-27-2018, 06:03 PM

My apologies. The kernel parameter is now

Code:

kdb_backlight

not

Code:

keyboard_backlight

You can set sony-laptop kbd_backlight=1, 2, or 0. Try

Code:

$ /sbin/modinfo sony-laptop

Then, retry the commands in #2 with the correct parameter.

jopopo · 05-28-2018, 04:11 AM

alright sorry for the late reply first here are the outputs of dmesg | tail :

on boot :

Code:

jopopo@jopopo-SVE1711X1EB ~ $ dmesg | tail
[    5.543524] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized
[    5.679637] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlp2s0: link is not ready
[    5.681843] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): enp14s0: link is not ready
[    5.682021] enp14s0: 0xffffbca240cfd000, 54:53:ed:22:99:4b, IRQ 25
[    5.770761] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): enp14s0: link is not ready
[    7.818313] r8168: enp14s0: link up
[    7.818340] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): enp14s0: link becomes ready
[    9.552193] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
[    9.552198] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
[    9.552203] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11
jopopo@jopopo-SVE1711X1EB ~ $

just after sleep :

Code:

jopopo@jopopo-SVE1711X1EB ~ $ dmesg | tail
[  385.848075] OOM killer enabled.
[  385.848076] Restarting tasks ... done.
[  386.883537] ata5: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
[  387.194757] ata5.00: configured for UDMA/133
[  387.255835] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlp2s0: link is not ready
[  387.256458] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): enp14s0: link is not ready
[  387.256690] enp14s0: 0xffffbca240cfd000, 54:53:ed:22:99:4b, IRQ 25
[  387.480548] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): enp14s0: link is not ready
[  389.550212] r8168: enp14s0: link up
[  389.550279] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): enp14s0: link becomes ready
jopopo@jopopo-SVE1711X1EB ~ $

I must admit I don't see anything that I can understand in this...

jopopo · 05-28-2018, 04:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AwesomeMachine

My apologies. The kernel parameter is now

Code:

kdb_backlight

not

Code:

keyboard_backlight

You can set sony-laptop kbd_backlight=1, 2, or 0. Try

Code:

$ /sbin/modinfo sony-laptop

Then, retry the commands in #2 with the correct parameter.

same story as before, I can see no difference between keyboard_backlight and kbd_backlight. tried in the same order as previously, before and after sleep, and exactly the same results as with the previous commands.

AwesomeMachine · 05-29-2018, 12:05 PM

Could you check lsmod to see if the sony-laptop module is loaded on boot up before sleep? Also try

Code:

$ grep -i sony /boot/config-$(uname -r)

and see what's enabled in the kernel. You can also try this program: https://sourceforge.net/projects/vaio-control-ce/

jopopo · 05-29-2018, 12:49 PM

according to lsmod the sony-laptop is running on boot as well as after sleep.

funny i looked trough the boot/config file once to find a clue for this problem and was a lot confused about all these settings. sorry to ask but how do you read this file ? i assume '=y' is for yes, but i'm not sure about '=m'.

anyway here is the output of the command :

Code:

jopopo@jopopo-SVE1711X1EB ~ $ grep -i sony /boot/config-$(uname -r)
CONFIG_IR_SONY_DECODER=m
CONFIG_VIDEO_SONY_BTF_MPX=m
CONFIG_HID_SONY=m
CONFIG_SONY_FF=y
CONFIG_SONY_LAPTOP=m
CONFIG_SONYPI_COMPAT=y

i will take a look at this vaio-control-ce program tonight thank you i'll let you know.

rokytnji · 05-29-2018, 01:40 PM

Just to reply. I see nothing relating in dmesg | tail that relates to backlight resume from sleep vs boot either.

Like I said. No harm no foul.

But:

Quote:

just after sleep :

Kinda confuses me. Kinda a ambiguous statement that can be taken all kind of ways.

Quote:

Restarting tasks ... done.

OK. I got a clearer picture.

jopopo · 05-29-2018, 02:04 PM

i just realised i went a bit too fast when translating this to "sleep" from french, the correct term is 'suspend' i just switched to the english language pack just to have a check. sorry for the misunderstanding if that is what you meant.