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ACPI/i915: Cannot configure display brightness on Dell Latitude E6440

PATCH In review Pali Rohár 5 participants 17 messages Sep 23, 2014 – Sep 29, 2014

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Hello,

after big changes in acpi video/i915 code I cannot change display brightness on my Dell Latitude E6440 with kernel 3.17-rc6. With kernel 3.13 everything worked fine.

More information about this problem:

For configuring brightness on Dell laptops there are 4 ways:
1) via acpi video driver
2) via dell-laptop driver
3) via i915 drm driver
4) from userspace with special dell SMI call
(e.g with program dellLcdBrightness from libsmbios package)

Methods 2) and 4) are same, both making special SMI call and Bios handing this request (just 2 is from kernel and 4 from userspace)

Method 1) via acpi video driver working, but is not perfect. Driver can be used to change brightness (but only some levels, probably this depends on acpi/DSDT tables), but cannot be used to retrieve current brightness (when BIOS/SMI change brightness acpi driver report old incorrect value). So I prefer dell-laptop driver instead acpi video.

Method 3) working even with 3.17-rc6 kernel but because that backlight device exported by i915 is marked as raw, desktop programs prefer to use other devices.

Moreover it looks like that methods 1) 2) and 4) just forward request to method 3). So in any cased brightness is changed by i915 drm driver.

I'm not sure (correct me if I'm wrong!) but I think that intel i915 drm driver accept changes (file intel_opregion.c) only if acpi function acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() returns true.

Function acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() returns true iff:
function acpi_video_backlight_support() returns true AND at least one of these functions returns false:
acpi_osi_is_win8()
acpi_video_use_native_backlight() backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW)

On my notebook acpi_osi_is_win8() returns true (as is win8 compliant), backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW) returns true as I'm using intel i915 drm driver with raw backlight device and acpi_video_use_native_backlight() returns true/false depending on "video.use_native_backlight" kernel param. Default is true.

So if I want to have working acpi video driver with display brightness support I need to boot kernel with param:
"video.use_native_backlight=0". I tested it with kernel 3.17-rc6 and this param really enabled display brightness support via acpi video driver -- which is good.

Driver dell-laptop creating backligh device for brightness control only if acpi_video_backlight_support() returns false. There is complicated condition for it and when kernel is booted with "video.use_native_backlight=0" that function returns true.

So conclusion is: With current code in kernel 3.17-rc6 it is not possible to control brightness of display with native driver dell-laptop on Dell Latitude E6440 (and probably on others too)!!!

And Because laptop is win8 compliant and you create decision to use native driver (instead acpi one) it is not possible to control display brightness without tweeks in kernel cmdline.

As I wrote I would rather to use native dell-laptop driver for controlling brightness, but it is not possible.

So how to solve this problem?

Quick solution would be to set use_native_backlight false for some Dell laptops which means, that acpi video will be used and in this case intel i915 driver will *not* drop backlight change request.

Another solution could be to disable check in dell_laptop driver and add use_native_backlight=0 to hooks. But this create two backlight interfaces (which is not good), but only way (for now) how to make dell_laptop working again.

Better and maybe only one proper solution would be to teach intel drm i915 driver to not drop backlight change request for Dell laptops (or all??). (This allows to work both acpi video and dell_laptop drivers without any change and with *any* value in param use_native_backlight). I think that problematic code is in function asle_set_backlight() in file intel_opregion.c (but I'm not sure). My idea is that "drop" event function it is caused by this commit 0b9f7d93ca6109048a4eb06332b666b6e29df4fe (but I'm not sure).

At least something must be done as I think that I'm not only one who has Dell laptop and brightness configuration is really important...

Thanks.

Signature · 2 lines
Pali Rohár
[email protected]
#1 lore raw

Hi,

Quoted 96 lines · Pali Rohár

Hello,

after big changes in acpi video/i915 code I cannot change display brightness on my Dell Latitude E6440 with kernel 3.17-rc6. With kernel 3.13 everything worked fine.

More information about this problem:

For configuring brightness on Dell laptops there are 4 ways:
1) via acpi video driver
2) via dell-laptop driver
3) via i915 drm driver
4) from userspace with special dell SMI call
(e.g with program dellLcdBrightness from libsmbios package)

Methods 2) and 4) are same, both making special SMI call and Bios handing this request (just 2 is from kernel and 4 from userspace)

Method 1) via acpi video driver working, but is not perfect. Driver can be used to change brightness (but only some levels, probably this depends on acpi/DSDT tables), but cannot be used to retrieve current brightness (when BIOS/SMI change brightness acpi driver report old incorrect value). So I prefer dell-laptop driver instead acpi video.

Method 3) working even with 3.17-rc6 kernel but because that backlight device exported by i915 is marked as raw, desktop programs prefer to use other devices.

Moreover it looks like that methods 1) 2) and 4) just forward request to method 3). So in any cased brightness is changed by i915 drm driver.

I'm not sure (correct me if I'm wrong!) but I think that intel i915 drm driver accept changes (file intel_opregion.c) only if acpi function acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() returns true.

Function acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() returns true iff:
function acpi_video_backlight_support() returns true AND at least one of these functions returns false:
acpi_osi_is_win8()
acpi_video_use_native_backlight() backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW)

On my notebook acpi_osi_is_win8() returns true (as is win8 compliant), backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW) returns true as I'm using intel i915 drm driver with raw backlight device and acpi_video_use_native_backlight() returns true/false depending on "video.use_native_backlight" kernel param. Default is true.

So if I want to have working acpi video driver with display brightness support I need to boot kernel with param:
"video.use_native_backlight=0". I tested it with kernel 3.17-rc6 and this param really enabled display brightness support via acpi video driver -- which is good.

Driver dell-laptop creating backligh device for brightness control only if acpi_video_backlight_support() returns false. There is complicated condition for it and when kernel is booted with "video.use_native_backlight=0" that function returns true.

So conclusion is: With current code in kernel 3.17-rc6 it is not possible to control brightness of display with native driver dell-laptop on Dell Latitude E6440 (and probably on others too)!!!

And Because laptop is win8 compliant and you create decision to use native driver (instead acpi one) it is not possible to control display brightness without tweeks in kernel cmdline.

As I wrote I would rather to use native dell-laptop driver for controlling brightness, but it is not possible.

So how to solve this problem?

Quick solution would be to set use_native_backlight false for some Dell laptops which means, that acpi video will be used and in this case intel i915 driver will *not* drop backlight change request.

Another solution could be to disable check in dell_laptop driver and add use_native_backlight=0 to hooks. But this create two backlight interfaces (which is not good), but only way (for now) how to make dell_laptop working again.

Better and maybe only one proper solution would be to teach intel drm i915 driver to not drop backlight change request for Dell laptops (or all??). (This allows to work both acpi video and dell_laptop drivers without any change and with *any* value in param use_native_backlight). I think that problematic code is in function asle_set_backlight() in file intel_opregion.c (but I'm not sure). My idea is that "drop" event function it is caused by this commit 0b9f7d93ca6109048a4eb06332b666b6e29df4fe (but I'm not sure).

Quoted 3 lines

At least something must be done as I think that I'm not only one who has Dell laptop and brightness configuration is really important...

I don't understand your problem, the kernel is selecting the i915 backlight driver, making that the only one available to userspace, so the one problem you state with the i915 driver, that it is "raw" is not an issue, as userspace will pick it when it is the only one.

Why would you want to use dell-laptop despite the i915 driver working fine ?

Regards,

Hans

#2 lore raw
Quoted 110 lines · On Tuesday 23 September 2014 22:31:31 you wrote:

Hi,

Quoted 103 lines · Pali Rohár

Hello,

after big changes in acpi video/i915 code I cannot change display brightness on my Dell Latitude E6440 with kernel 3.17-rc6. With kernel 3.13 everything worked fine.

More information about this problem:

For configuring brightness on Dell laptops there are 4 ways:
1) via acpi video driver
2) via dell-laptop driver
3) via i915 drm driver
4) from userspace with special dell SMI call

(e.g with program dellLcdBrightness from libsmbios package)

Methods 2) and 4) are same, both making special SMI call and Bios handing this request (just 2 is from kernel and 4 from userspace)

Method 1) via acpi video driver working, but is not perfect. Driver can be used to change brightness (but only some levels, probably this depends on acpi/DSDT tables), but cannot be used to retrieve current brightness (when BIOS/SMI change brightness acpi driver report old incorrect value). So I prefer dell-laptop driver instead acpi video.

Method 3) working even with 3.17-rc6 kernel but because that backlight device exported by i915 is marked as raw, desktop programs prefer to use other devices.

Moreover it looks like that methods 1) 2) and 4) just forward request to method 3). So in any cased brightness is changed by i915 drm driver.

I'm not sure (correct me if I'm wrong!) but I think that intel i915 drm driver accept changes (file intel_opregion.c) only if acpi function acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() returns true.

Function acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() returns true
iff: function acpi_video_backlight_support() returns true AND at least one of these functions returns false:
acpi_osi_is_win8() acpi_video_use_native_backlight() backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW)

On my notebook acpi_osi_is_win8() returns true (as is win8 compliant), backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW) returns true as I'm using intel i915 drm driver with raw backlight device and acpi_video_use_native_backlight() returns true/false depending on "video.use_native_backlight" kernel param. Default is true.

So if I want to have working acpi video driver with display brightness support I need to boot kernel with param:
"video.use_native_backlight=0". I tested it with kernel 3.17-rc6 and this param really enabled display brightness support via acpi video driver -- which is good.

Driver dell-laptop creating backligh device for brightness control only if acpi_video_backlight_support() returns false. There is complicated condition for it and when kernel is booted with "video.use_native_backlight=0" that function returns true.

So conclusion is: With current code in kernel 3.17-rc6 it is not possible to control brightness of display with native driver dell-laptop on Dell Latitude E6440 (and probably on others too)!!!

And Because laptop is win8 compliant and you create decision to use native driver (instead acpi one) it is not possible to control display brightness without tweeks in kernel cmdline.

As I wrote I would rather to use native dell-laptop driver for controlling brightness, but it is not possible.

So how to solve this problem?

Quick solution would be to set use_native_backlight false for some Dell laptops which means, that acpi video will be used and in this case intel i915 driver will *not* drop backlight change request.

Another solution could be to disable check in dell_laptop driver and add use_native_backlight=0 to hooks. But this create two backlight interfaces (which is not good), but only way (for now) how to make dell_laptop working again.

Better and maybe only one proper solution would be to teach intel drm i915 driver to not drop backlight change request for Dell laptops (or all??). (This allows to work both acpi video and dell_laptop drivers without any change and with *any* value in param use_native_backlight). I think that problematic code is in function asle_set_backlight() in file intel_opregion.c (but I'm not sure). My idea is that "drop" event function it is caused by this commit 0b9f7d93ca6109048a4eb06332b666b6e29df4fe (but I'm not sure).

Quoted 3 lines

At least something must be done as I think that I'm not only one who has Dell laptop and brightness configuration is really important...

Quoted 6 lines

I don't understand your problem, the kernel is selecting the i915 backlight driver, making that the only one available to userspace, so the one problem you state with the i915 driver, that it is "raw" is not an issue, as userspace will pick it when it is the only one.

It is not only one. Also dell-laptop (or acpi video) backlight interface is created (depends on use_native_backlight param). And userspace will pick dell-laptop (or acpi video) to use (which cannot change brightness).

Quoted 3 lines

Why would you want to use dell-laptop despite the i915 driver working fine ?

i915 working only if I compile kernel without acpi video dell- laptop support (distributions compile kernel with these drivers) and i915 is not good for usage. First it provides more then thousand brightness levels and lot of (with low numbers) completely turn display off. And if userspace map these thousand levels into 5-10 levels (as nobody want to press brightness key up/down 1000x) two lowest levels cause display off. With acpi video and dell-laptop driver levels are mapped into small level space in perfect way. So this is reason I want to use dell-laptop for controlling brightness.

Quoted 3 lines

Regards,

Hans

Signature · 2 lines
Pali Rohár
[email protected]
#3 lore raw

Hi,

Quoted 111 lines · Pali Rohár
Quoted 110 lines · On Tuesday 23 September 2014 22:31:31 you wrote:

Hi,

Quoted 106 lines · Pali Rohár

Hello,

after big changes in acpi video/i915 code I cannot change display brightness on my Dell Latitude E6440 with kernel 3.17-rc6. With kernel 3.13 everything worked fine.

More information about this problem:

For configuring brightness on Dell laptops there are 4 ways:
1) via acpi video driver
2) via dell-laptop driver
3) via i915 drm driver
4) from userspace with special dell SMI call

(e.g with program dellLcdBrightness from libsmbios package)

Methods 2) and 4) are same, both making special SMI call and Bios handing this request (just 2 is from kernel and 4 from userspace)

Method 1) via acpi video driver working, but is not perfect. Driver can be used to change brightness (but only some levels, probably this depends on acpi/DSDT tables), but cannot be used to retrieve current brightness (when BIOS/SMI change brightness acpi driver report old incorrect value). So I prefer dell-laptop driver instead acpi video.

Method 3) working even with 3.17-rc6 kernel but because that backlight device exported by i915 is marked as raw, desktop programs prefer to use other devices.

Moreover it looks like that methods 1) 2) and 4) just forward request to method 3). So in any cased brightness is changed by i915 drm driver.

I'm not sure (correct me if I'm wrong!) but I think that intel i915 drm driver accept changes (file intel_opregion.c) only if acpi function acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() returns true.

Function acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() returns true
iff: function acpi_video_backlight_support() returns true AND at least one of these functions returns false:
acpi_osi_is_win8() acpi_video_use_native_backlight() backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW)

On my notebook acpi_osi_is_win8() returns true (as is win8 compliant), backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW) returns true as I'm using intel i915 drm driver with raw backlight device and acpi_video_use_native_backlight() returns true/false depending on "video.use_native_backlight" kernel param. Default is true.

So if I want to have working acpi video driver with display brightness support I need to boot kernel with param:
"video.use_native_backlight=0". I tested it with kernel 3.17-rc6 and this param really enabled display brightness support via acpi video driver -- which is good.

Driver dell-laptop creating backligh device for brightness control only if acpi_video_backlight_support() returns false. There is complicated condition for it and when kernel is booted with "video.use_native_backlight=0" that function returns true.

So conclusion is: With current code in kernel 3.17-rc6 it is not possible to control brightness of display with native driver dell-laptop on Dell Latitude E6440 (and probably on others too)!!!

And Because laptop is win8 compliant and you create decision to use native driver (instead acpi one) it is not possible to control display brightness without tweeks in kernel cmdline.

As I wrote I would rather to use native dell-laptop driver for controlling brightness, but it is not possible.

So how to solve this problem?

Quick solution would be to set use_native_backlight false for some Dell laptops which means, that acpi video will be used and in this case intel i915 driver will *not* drop backlight change request.

Another solution could be to disable check in dell_laptop driver and add use_native_backlight=0 to hooks. But this create two backlight interfaces (which is not good), but only way (for now) how to make dell_laptop working again.

Better and maybe only one proper solution would be to teach intel drm i915 driver to not drop backlight change request for Dell laptops (or all??). (This allows to work both acpi video and dell_laptop drivers without any change and with *any* value in param use_native_backlight). I think that problematic code is in function asle_set_backlight() in file intel_opregion.c (but I'm not sure). My idea is that "drop" event function it is caused by this commit 0b9f7d93ca6109048a4eb06332b666b6e29df4fe (but I'm not sure).

At least something must be done as I think that I'm not only one who has Dell laptop and brightness configuration is really important...

Quoted 8 lines
Quoted 6 lines

I don't understand your problem, the kernel is selecting the i915 backlight driver, making that the only one available to userspace, so the one problem you state with the i915 driver, that it is "raw" is not an issue, as userspace will pick it when it is the only one.

It is not only one.

Are you sure, if you do not specify any commandline parameters, then neither dell-laptop nor acpi-video should register a backlight interface.

dell-laptop.c has:

#ifdef CONFIG_ACPI
        /* In the event of an ACPI backlight being available, don't
         * register the platform controller.
         */
        if (acpi_video_backlight_support())
                return 0;

#endif

And acpi_video_backlight_support() will (normally) return true on acpi-backlight capable systems independent of use_native_backlight.

And drivers/acpi/video.c has this:

        /* no warning message if acpi_backlight=vendor or a quirk is used */
        if (!acpi_video_verify_backlight_support())
                return;

...

bool acpi_video_verify_backlight_support(void)

{
        if (acpi_osi_is_win8() && acpi_video_use_native_backlight() &&
            backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW))
                return false;
        return acpi_video_backlight_support();
}

So unlike the check in dell-laptop this one does depend on the use_native_backlight setting.

I've just checked 3.17 on my E6430 and there this works as it should, I only get the intel_backlight in /sys/class/backlight

Quoted 9 lines

Also dell-laptop (or acpi video) backlight
interface is created (depends on use_native_backlight param). And userspace will pick dell-laptop (or acpi video) to use (which cannot change brightness).

Quoted 3 lines

Why would you want to use dell-laptop despite the i915 driver working fine ?

Quoted 7 lines

i915 working only if I compile kernel without acpi video dell- laptop support (distributions compile kernel with these drivers) and i915 is not good for usage. First it provides more then thousand brightness levels and lot of (with low numbers) completely turn display off. And if userspace map these thousand levels into 5-10 levels (as nobody want to press brightness key up/down 1000x) two lowest levels cause display off.

More and more laptops will only have working backlight control at all when using i915, so userspace will need to learn to better deal with backlight controls with these ranges. And low pwm levels turning the backlight of is normal for raw interfaces, if userspace does not want this, then they should not go so low.

I suggest that you file a bug against your desktop environment that it is not using the backlight controls in an optimal manner, from the kernel pov everything is working fine.

Quoted 4 lines

With acpi
video and dell-laptop driver levels are mapped into small level space in perfect way. So this is reason I want to use dell-laptop for controlling brightness.

If you want to use dell-laptop, specify acpi_backlight=vendor on the kernel commandline, that will give you dell_laptop + intel_backlight as backlight interfaces, and userspace should prefer dell_laptop. But IMHO it would be better to file a bug with your desktop environment, and get that fixed to work properly with intel_backlight (or with raw backlight interfaces in general).

Regards,

Hans

Quoted 5 lines
Quoted 4 lines

Regards,

Hans

_______________________________________________
Intel-gfx mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/intel-gfx

#4 lore raw
Quoted 160 lines · On Wednesday 24 September 2014 10:19:38 Hans de Goede wrote:

Hi,

Quoted 115 lines · Pali Rohár
Quoted 114 lines · On Tuesday 23 September 2014 22:31:31 you wrote:

Hi,

Quoted 110 lines · Pali Rohár

Hello,

after big changes in acpi video/i915 code I cannot change display brightness on my Dell Latitude E6440 with kernel 3.17-rc6. With kernel 3.13 everything worked fine.

More information about this problem:

For configuring brightness on Dell laptops there are 4
ways: 1) via acpi video driver
2) via dell-laptop driver
3) via i915 drm driver
4) from userspace with special dell SMI call

(e.g with program dellLcdBrightness from libsmbios package)

Methods 2) and 4) are same, both making special SMI call and Bios handing this request (just 2 is from kernel and 4 from userspace)

Method 1) via acpi video driver working, but is not perfect. Driver can be used to change brightness (but only some levels, probably this depends on acpi/DSDT tables), but cannot be used to retrieve current brightness (when BIOS/SMI change brightness acpi driver report old incorrect value). So I prefer dell-laptop driver instead acpi video.

Method 3) working even with 3.17-rc6 kernel but because that backlight device exported by i915 is marked as raw, desktop programs prefer to use other devices.

Moreover it looks like that methods 1) 2) and 4) just forward request to method 3). So in any cased brightness is changed by i915 drm driver.

I'm not sure (correct me if I'm wrong!) but I think that intel i915 drm driver accept changes (file intel_opregion.c) only if acpi function acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() returns true.

Function acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() returns true iff: function acpi_video_backlight_support() returns true AND at least one of these functions returns false:
acpi_osi_is_win8() acpi_video_use_native_backlight() backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW)

On my notebook acpi_osi_is_win8() returns true (as is win8 compliant), backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW) returns true as I'm using intel i915 drm driver with raw backlight device and acpi_video_use_native_backlight() returns true/false depending on "video.use_native_backlight" kernel param. Default is true.

So if I want to have working acpi video driver with display brightness support I need to boot kernel with
param: "video.use_native_backlight=0". I tested it with kernel 3.17-rc6 and this param really enabled display brightness support via acpi video driver -- which is good.

Driver dell-laptop creating backligh device for brightness control only if acpi_video_backlight_support() returns false. There is complicated condition for it and when kernel is booted with "video.use_native_backlight=0" that function returns true.

So conclusion is: With current code in kernel 3.17-rc6 it is not possible to control brightness of display with native driver dell-laptop on Dell Latitude E6440 (and probably on others too)!!!

And Because laptop is win8 compliant and you create decision to use native driver (instead acpi one) it is not possible to control display brightness without tweeks in kernel cmdline.

As I wrote I would rather to use native dell-laptop driver for controlling brightness, but it is not possible.

So how to solve this problem?

Quick solution would be to set use_native_backlight false for some Dell laptops which means, that acpi video will be used and in this case intel i915 driver will *not* drop backlight change request.

Another solution could be to disable check in dell_laptop driver and add use_native_backlight=0 to hooks. But this create two backlight interfaces (which is not good), but only way (for now) how to make dell_laptop working again.

Better and maybe only one proper solution would be to teach intel drm i915 driver to not drop backlight change request for Dell laptops (or all??). (This allows to work both acpi video and dell_laptop drivers without any change and with *any* value in param use_native_backlight). I think that problematic code is in function asle_set_backlight() in file intel_opregion.c (but I'm not sure). My idea is that "drop" event function it is caused by this commit 0b9f7d93ca6109048a4eb06332b666b6e29df4fe (but I'm not sure).

At least something must be done as I think that I'm not only one who has Dell laptop and brightness configuration is really important...

Quoted 7 lines
Quoted 5 lines

I don't understand your problem, the kernel is selecting the i915 backlight driver, making that the only one available to userspace, so the one problem you state with the i915 driver, that it is "raw" is not an issue, as userspace will pick it when it is the only one.

It is not only one.

Are you sure, if you do not specify any commandline parameters, then neither dell-laptop nor acpi-video should register a backlight interface.

dell-laptop.c has:

#ifdef CONFIG_ACPI
        /* In the event of an ACPI backlight being available,
don't * register the platform controller.
         */
        if (acpi_video_backlight_support())
                return 0;

#endif

And acpi_video_backlight_support() will (normally) return true on acpi-backlight capable systems independent of use_native_backlight.

And drivers/acpi/video.c has this:

        /* no warning message if acpi_backlight=vendor or a
quirk is used */ if (!acpi_video_verify_backlight_support())
                return;

...

bool acpi_video_verify_backlight_support(void)

{
        if (acpi_osi_is_win8() &&
acpi_video_use_native_backlight() &&
backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW)) return false;
        return acpi_video_backlight_support();
}
Quoted 3 lines

So unlike the check in dell-laptop this one does depend on the use_native_backlight setting.

It depends (see my previous mail). Here is code:

static bool acpi_video_use_native_backlight(void)

{
	if (use_native_backlight_param != -1)
		return use_native_backlight_param;
	else
		return use_native_backlight_dmi;
}
Quoted 21 lines

I've just checked 3.17 on my E6430 and there this works as it should, I only get the intel_backlight in /sys/class/backlight

Quoted 8 lines

Also dell-laptop (or acpi video) backlight interface is created (depends on use_native_backlight param). And userspace will pick dell-laptop (or acpi video) to use (which cannot change brightness).

Quoted 2 lines

Why would you want to use dell-laptop despite the i915 driver working fine ?

Quoted 8 lines

i915 working only if I compile kernel without acpi video dell- laptop support (distributions compile kernel with these drivers) and i915 is not good for usage. First it provides more then thousand brightness levels and lot of (with low numbers) completely turn display off. And if userspace map these thousand levels into 5-10 levels (as nobody want to press brightness key up/down 1000x) two lowest levels cause display off.

Quoted 7 lines

More and more laptops will only have working backlight control at all when using i915, so userspace will need to learn to better deal with backlight controls with these ranges. And low pwm levels turning the backlight of is normal for raw interfaces, if userspace does not want this, then they should not go so low.

So then kernel should report which low levels turn backlight off so userspace will know which levels should avoid. But this is not implemented yet.

Quoted 4 lines

I suggest that you file a bug against your desktop environment that it is not using the backlight controls in an optimal manner, from the kernel pov everything is working fine.

Once I will know which levels should not DE use I can report bug.

Quoted 9 lines
Quoted 4 lines

With acpi
video and dell-laptop driver levels are mapped into small level space in perfect way. So this is reason I want to use dell-laptop for controlling brightness.

If you want to use dell-laptop, specify acpi_backlight=vendor on the kernel commandline, that will give you dell_laptop + intel_backlight as backlight interfaces, and userspace should prefer dell_laptop.

With acpi_backlight=vendor dell-laptop is not working, see my previous mail. In this case intel i915 drm driver ignore bios events for changing brightness. And userspace prefer to use dell_laptop which do nothing!

Quoted 12 lines

But IMHO it would be better to file a bug
with your desktop environment, and get that fixed to work properly with intel_backlight (or with raw backlight interfaces in general).

Regards,

Hans

Quoted 3 lines
Quoted 3 lines

Regards,

Hans

Signature · 2 lines
Pali Rohár
[email protected]
#5 lore raw
Quoted 241 lines · On Wednesday 24 September 2014 10:59:41 Pali Rohár wrote:
Quoted 173 lines · On Wednesday 24 September 2014 10:19:38 Hans de Goede wrote:

Hi,

Quoted 120 lines · Pali Rohár
Quoted 119 lines · On Tuesday 23 September 2014 22:31:31 you wrote:

Hi,

Quoted 115 lines · Pali Rohár

Hello,

after big changes in acpi video/i915 code I cannot change display brightness on my Dell Latitude E6440 with kernel 3.17-rc6. With kernel 3.13 everything worked fine.

More information about this problem:

For configuring brightness on Dell laptops there are 4
ways: 1) via acpi video driver
2) via dell-laptop driver
3) via i915 drm driver
4) from userspace with special dell SMI call

(e.g with program dellLcdBrightness from libsmbios package)

Methods 2) and 4) are same, both making special SMI call and Bios handing this request (just 2 is from kernel and 4 from userspace)

Method 1) via acpi video driver working, but is not perfect. Driver can be used to change brightness (but only some levels, probably this depends on acpi/DSDT tables), but cannot be used to retrieve current brightness (when BIOS/SMI change brightness acpi driver report old incorrect value). So I prefer dell-laptop driver instead acpi video.

Method 3) working even with 3.17-rc6 kernel but because that backlight device exported by i915 is marked as raw, desktop programs prefer to use other devices.

Moreover it looks like that methods 1) 2) and 4) just forward request to method 3). So in any cased brightness is changed by i915 drm driver.

I'm not sure (correct me if I'm wrong!) but I think that intel i915 drm driver accept changes (file intel_opregion.c) only if acpi function acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() returns true.

Function acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() returns true iff: function acpi_video_backlight_support() returns true AND at least one of these functions returns false: acpi_osi_is_win8() acpi_video_use_native_backlight() backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW)

On my notebook acpi_osi_is_win8() returns true (as is win8 compliant), backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW) returns true as I'm using intel i915 drm driver with raw backlight device and acpi_video_use_native_backlight() returns true/false depending on "video.use_native_backlight" kernel param. Default is true.

So if I want to have working acpi video driver with display brightness support I need to boot kernel with
param: "video.use_native_backlight=0". I tested it with kernel 3.17-rc6 and this param really enabled display brightness support via acpi video driver -- which is good.

Driver dell-laptop creating backligh device for brightness control only if acpi_video_backlight_support() returns false. There is complicated condition for it and when kernel is booted with "video.use_native_backlight=0" that function returns true.

So conclusion is: With current code in kernel 3.17-rc6 it is not possible to control brightness of display with native driver dell-laptop on Dell Latitude E6440 (and probably on others too)!!!

And Because laptop is win8 compliant and you create decision to use native driver (instead acpi one) it is not possible to control display brightness without tweeks in kernel cmdline.

As I wrote I would rather to use native dell-laptop driver for controlling brightness, but it is not possible.

So how to solve this problem?

Quick solution would be to set use_native_backlight false for some Dell laptops which means, that acpi video will be used and in this case intel i915 driver will *not* drop backlight change request.

Another solution could be to disable check in dell_laptop driver and add use_native_backlight=0 to hooks. But this create two backlight interfaces (which is not good), but only way (for now) how to make dell_laptop working again.

Better and maybe only one proper solution would be to teach intel drm i915 driver to not drop backlight change request for Dell laptops (or all??). (This allows to work both acpi video and dell_laptop drivers without any change and with *any* value in param use_native_backlight). I think that problematic code is in function asle_set_backlight() in file intel_opregion.c (but I'm not sure). My idea is that "drop" event function it is caused by this commit 0b9f7d93ca6109048a4eb06332b666b6e29df4fe (but I'm not sure).

At least something must be done as I think that I'm not only one who has Dell laptop and brightness configuration is really important...

Quoted 7 lines
Quoted 5 lines

I don't understand your problem, the kernel is selecting the i915 backlight driver, making that the only one available to userspace, so the one problem you state with the i915 driver, that it is "raw" is not an issue, as userspace will pick it when it is the only one.

It is not only one.

Are you sure, if you do not specify any commandline parameters, then neither dell-laptop nor acpi-video should register a backlight interface.

dell-laptop.c has:

#ifdef CONFIG_ACPI

        /* In the event of an ACPI backlight being
        available,

don't * register the platform controller.

         */
        
        if (acpi_video_backlight_support())
        
                return 0;

#endif

And acpi_video_backlight_support() will (normally) return true on acpi-backlight capable systems independent of use_native_backlight.

And drivers/acpi/video.c has this:

        /* no warning message if acpi_backlight=vendor or a

quirk is used */ if (!acpi_video_verify_backlight_support())

                return;

...

bool acpi_video_verify_backlight_support(void)
{

        if (acpi_osi_is_win8() &&

acpi_video_use_native_backlight() && backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW)) return false;

Quoted 6 lines
        return acpi_video_backlight_support();

}

So unlike the check in dell-laptop this one does depend on the use_native_backlight setting.

It depends (see my previous mail). Here is code:

static bool acpi_video_use_native_backlight(void)

{
	if (use_native_backlight_param != -1)
		return use_native_backlight_param;
	else
		return use_native_backlight_dmi;
}
Quoted 21 lines

I've just checked 3.17 on my E6430 and there this works as it should, I only get the intel_backlight in /sys/class/backlight

Quoted 8 lines

Also dell-laptop (or acpi video) backlight interface is created (depends on use_native_backlight param). And userspace will pick dell-laptop (or acpi video) to use (which cannot change brightness).

Quoted 2 lines

Why would you want to use dell-laptop despite the i915 driver working fine ?

Quoted 8 lines

i915 working only if I compile kernel without acpi video dell- laptop support (distributions compile kernel with these drivers) and i915 is not good for usage. First it provides more then thousand brightness levels and lot of (with low numbers) completely turn display off. And if userspace map these thousand levels into 5-10 levels (as nobody want to press brightness key up/down 1000x) two lowest levels cause display off.

Quoted 6 lines

More and more laptops will only have working backlight control at all when using i915, so userspace will need to learn to better deal with backlight controls with these ranges. And low pwm levels turning the backlight of is normal for raw interfaces, if userspace does not want this, then they should not go so low.

So then kernel should report which low levels turn backlight off so userspace will know which levels should avoid. But this is not implemented yet.

Quoted 4 lines

I suggest that you file a bug against your desktop environment that it is not using the backlight controls in an optimal manner, from the kernel pov everything is working fine.

Once I will know which levels should not DE use I can report bug.

Quoted 9 lines
Quoted 4 lines

With acpi
video and dell-laptop driver levels are mapped into small level space in perfect way. So this is reason I want to use dell-laptop for controlling brightness.

If you want to use dell-laptop, specify acpi_backlight=vendor on the kernel commandline, that will give you dell_laptop + intel_backlight as backlight interfaces, and userspace should prefer dell_laptop.

Quoted 5 lines

With acpi_backlight=vendor dell-laptop is not working, see my previous mail. In this case intel i915 drm driver ignore bios events for changing brightness. And userspace prefer to use dell_laptop which do nothing!

Ok, that problematic commit is:

ACPI / i915: ignore firmware requests for backlight change 0b9f7d93ca6109048a4eb06332b666b6e29df4fe

When I reverted it acpi_backlight=vendor started working again (via dell_laptop). Without reverting that commit dell_laptop simply do nothing.

Tested and on my laptop Dell Latitude E6440 driver dell_laptop does not work with above commit.

Quoted 12 lines
Quoted 12 lines

But IMHO it would be better to file a bug
with your desktop environment, and get that fixed to work properly with intel_backlight (or with raw backlight interfaces in general).

Regards,

Hans

Quoted 3 lines
Quoted 3 lines

Regards,

Hans

Signature · 2 lines
Pali Rohár
[email protected]
#6 lore raw

Hi,

Quoted 184 lines · Pali Rohár
Quoted 183 lines · On Wednesday 24 September 2014 10:59:41 Pali Rohár wrote:
Quoted 173 lines · On Wednesday 24 September 2014 10:19:38 Hans de Goede wrote:

Hi,

Quoted 120 lines · Pali Rohár
Quoted 119 lines · On Tuesday 23 September 2014 22:31:31 you wrote:

Hi,

Quoted 115 lines · Pali Rohár

Hello,

after big changes in acpi video/i915 code I cannot change display brightness on my Dell Latitude E6440 with kernel 3.17-rc6. With kernel 3.13 everything worked fine.

More information about this problem:

For configuring brightness on Dell laptops there are 4
ways: 1) via acpi video driver
2) via dell-laptop driver
3) via i915 drm driver
4) from userspace with special dell SMI call

(e.g with program dellLcdBrightness from libsmbios package)

Methods 2) and 4) are same, both making special SMI call and Bios handing this request (just 2 is from kernel and 4 from userspace)

Method 1) via acpi video driver working, but is not perfect. Driver can be used to change brightness (but only some levels, probably this depends on acpi/DSDT tables), but cannot be used to retrieve current brightness (when BIOS/SMI change brightness acpi driver report old incorrect value). So I prefer dell-laptop driver instead acpi video.

Method 3) working even with 3.17-rc6 kernel but because that backlight device exported by i915 is marked as raw, desktop programs prefer to use other devices.

Moreover it looks like that methods 1) 2) and 4) just forward request to method 3). So in any cased brightness is changed by i915 drm driver.

I'm not sure (correct me if I'm wrong!) but I think that intel i915 drm driver accept changes (file intel_opregion.c) only if acpi function acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() returns true.

Function acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() returns true iff: function acpi_video_backlight_support() returns true AND at least one of these functions returns false: acpi_osi_is_win8() acpi_video_use_native_backlight() backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW)

On my notebook acpi_osi_is_win8() returns true (as is win8 compliant), backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW) returns true as I'm using intel i915 drm driver with raw backlight device and acpi_video_use_native_backlight() returns true/false depending on "video.use_native_backlight" kernel param. Default is true.

So if I want to have working acpi video driver with display brightness support I need to boot kernel with
param: "video.use_native_backlight=0". I tested it with kernel 3.17-rc6 and this param really enabled display brightness support via acpi video driver -- which is good.

Driver dell-laptop creating backligh device for brightness control only if acpi_video_backlight_support() returns false. There is complicated condition for it and when kernel is booted with "video.use_native_backlight=0" that function returns true.

So conclusion is: With current code in kernel 3.17-rc6 it is not possible to control brightness of display with native driver dell-laptop on Dell Latitude E6440 (and probably on others too)!!!

And Because laptop is win8 compliant and you create decision to use native driver (instead acpi one) it is not possible to control display brightness without tweeks in kernel cmdline.

As I wrote I would rather to use native dell-laptop driver for controlling brightness, but it is not possible.

So how to solve this problem?

Quick solution would be to set use_native_backlight false for some Dell laptops which means, that acpi video will be used and in this case intel i915 driver will *not* drop backlight change request.

Another solution could be to disable check in dell_laptop driver and add use_native_backlight=0 to hooks. But this create two backlight interfaces (which is not good), but only way (for now) how to make dell_laptop working again.

Better and maybe only one proper solution would be to teach intel drm i915 driver to not drop backlight change request for Dell laptops (or all??). (This allows to work both acpi video and dell_laptop drivers without any change and with *any* value in param use_native_backlight). I think that problematic code is in function asle_set_backlight() in file intel_opregion.c (but I'm not sure). My idea is that "drop" event function it is caused by this commit 0b9f7d93ca6109048a4eb06332b666b6e29df4fe (but I'm not sure).

At least something must be done as I think that I'm not only one who has Dell laptop and brightness configuration is really important...

Quoted 7 lines
Quoted 5 lines

I don't understand your problem, the kernel is selecting the i915 backlight driver, making that the only one available to userspace, so the one problem you state with the i915 driver, that it is "raw" is not an issue, as userspace will pick it when it is the only one.

It is not only one.

Are you sure, if you do not specify any commandline parameters, then neither dell-laptop nor acpi-video should register a backlight interface.

dell-laptop.c has:

#ifdef CONFIG_ACPI

        /* In the event of an ACPI backlight being
        available,

don't * register the platform controller.

         */
        
        if (acpi_video_backlight_support())
        
                return 0;

#endif

And acpi_video_backlight_support() will (normally) return true on acpi-backlight capable systems independent of use_native_backlight.

And drivers/acpi/video.c has this:

        /* no warning message if acpi_backlight=vendor or a

quirk is used */ if (!acpi_video_verify_backlight_support())

                return;

...

bool acpi_video_verify_backlight_support(void)
{

        if (acpi_osi_is_win8() &&

acpi_video_use_native_backlight() && backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW)) return false;

Quoted 6 lines
        return acpi_video_backlight_support();

}

So unlike the check in dell-laptop this one does depend on the use_native_backlight setting.

It depends (see my previous mail). Here is code:

Quoted 7 lines
Quoted 7 lines

static bool acpi_video_use_native_backlight(void)

{
	if (use_native_backlight_param != -1)
		return use_native_backlight_param;
	else
		return use_native_backlight_dmi;
}

Not sure what you're trying to say here, the default for this is 1, so if you don't specify anything, then this:

bool acpi_video_verify_backlight_support(void)

{
        if (acpi_osi_is_win8() && acpi_video_use_native_backlight() &&
            backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW))
                return false;
        return acpi_video_backlight_support();
}

Will return false, and you won't get an acpi_video0 backlight interface, only the intel_backlight one, and everything should just work (except for the turning off on low settings).

Have you tried not using any kernel commandline options? What happens?

Quoted 62 lines
Quoted 51 lines
Quoted 22 lines

I've just checked 3.17 on my E6430 and there this works as it should, I only get the intel_backlight in /sys/class/backlight

Quoted 8 lines

Also dell-laptop (or acpi video) backlight interface is created (depends on use_native_backlight param). And userspace will pick dell-laptop (or acpi video) to use (which cannot change brightness).

Quoted 2 lines

Why would you want to use dell-laptop despite the i915 driver working fine ?

Quoted 8 lines

i915 working only if I compile kernel without acpi video dell- laptop support (distributions compile kernel with these drivers) and i915 is not good for usage. First it provides more then thousand brightness levels and lot of (with low numbers) completely turn display off. And if userspace map these thousand levels into 5-10 levels (as nobody want to press brightness key up/down 1000x) two lowest levels cause display off.

Quoted 6 lines

More and more laptops will only have working backlight control at all when using i915, so userspace will need to learn to better deal with backlight controls with these ranges. And low pwm levels turning the backlight of is normal for raw interfaces, if userspace does not want this, then they should not go so low.

So then kernel should report which low levels turn backlight off so userspace will know which levels should avoid. But this is not implemented yet.

Quoted 4 lines

I suggest that you file a bug against your desktop environment that it is not using the backlight controls in an optimal manner, from the kernel pov everything is working fine.

Once I will know which levels should not DE use I can report bug.

Quoted 9 lines
Quoted 4 lines

With acpi
video and dell-laptop driver levels are mapped into small level space in perfect way. So this is reason I want to use dell-laptop for controlling brightness.

If you want to use dell-laptop, specify acpi_backlight=vendor on the kernel commandline, that will give you dell_laptop + intel_backlight as backlight interfaces, and userspace should prefer dell_laptop.

Quoted 5 lines

With acpi_backlight=vendor dell-laptop is not working, see my previous mail. In this case intel i915 drm driver ignore bios events for changing brightness. And userspace prefer to use dell_laptop which do nothing!

Ok, that problematic commit is:

ACPI / i915: ignore firmware requests for backlight change 0b9f7d93ca6109048a4eb06332b666b6e29df4fe

Quoted 6 lines

When I reverted it acpi_backlight=vendor started working again (via dell_laptop). Without reverting that commit dell_laptop simply do nothing.

Tested and on my laptop Dell Latitude E6440 driver dell_laptop does not work with above commit.

Hmm, interesting, so when dell-laptop registers and makes a few calls using the dell-laptop acpi interface, then you either stop getting key press events through the acpi-video-bus, or dell-laptop is just a shim around the i915 interface with the firmware calling into itself on these models. Given that dell-laptop is ancient, the shim story is not that far fetched.

Do you still get an on screen display showing the brightness when using a kernel without this patch + acpi_backlight=vendor ?

Regards,

Hans
_______________________________________________
Intel-gfx mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/intel-gfx

#7 lore raw
Quoted 213 lines · On Wednesday 24 September 2014 14:04:36 Hans de Goede wrote:

Hi,

Quoted 191 lines · Pali Rohár
Quoted 190 lines · On Wednesday 24 September 2014 10:59:41 Pali Rohár wrote:
Quoted 175 lines · On Wednesday 24 September 2014 10:19:38 Hans de Goede wrote:

Hi,

Quoted 120 lines · Pali Rohár
Quoted 119 lines · On Tuesday 23 September 2014 22:31:31 you wrote:

Hi,

Quoted 115 lines · Pali Rohár

Hello,

after big changes in acpi video/i915 code I cannot change display brightness on my Dell Latitude E6440 with kernel 3.17-rc6. With kernel 3.13 everything worked fine.

More information about this problem:

For configuring brightness on Dell laptops there are 4
ways: 1) via acpi video driver
2) via dell-laptop driver
3) via i915 drm driver
4) from userspace with special dell SMI call

(e.g with program dellLcdBrightness from libsmbios package)

Methods 2) and 4) are same, both making special SMI call and Bios handing this request (just 2 is from kernel and 4 from userspace)

Method 1) via acpi video driver working, but is not perfect. Driver can be used to change brightness (but only some levels, probably this depends on acpi/DSDT tables), but cannot be used to retrieve current brightness (when BIOS/SMI change brightness acpi driver report old incorrect value). So I prefer dell-laptop driver instead acpi video.

Method 3) working even with 3.17-rc6 kernel but because that backlight device exported by i915 is marked as raw, desktop programs prefer to use other devices.

Moreover it looks like that methods 1) 2) and 4) just forward request to method 3). So in any cased brightness is changed by i915 drm driver.

I'm not sure (correct me if I'm wrong!) but I think that intel i915 drm driver accept changes (file intel_opregion.c) only if acpi function acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() returns true.

Function acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() returns true iff: function acpi_video_backlight_support() returns true AND at least one of these functions returns false: acpi_osi_is_win8() acpi_video_use_native_backlight() backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW)

On my notebook acpi_osi_is_win8() returns true (as is win8 compliant), backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW) returns true as I'm using intel i915 drm driver with raw backlight device and acpi_video_use_native_backlight() returns true/false depending on "video.use_native_backlight" kernel param. Default is true.

So if I want to have working acpi video driver with display brightness support I need to boot kernel with
param: "video.use_native_backlight=0". I tested it with kernel 3.17-rc6 and this param really enabled display brightness support via acpi video driver -- which is good.

Driver dell-laptop creating backligh device for brightness control only if acpi_video_backlight_support() returns false. There is complicated condition for it and when kernel is booted with "video.use_native_backlight=0" that function returns true.

So conclusion is: With current code in kernel 3.17-rc6 it is not possible to control brightness of display with native driver dell-laptop on Dell Latitude E6440 (and probably on others too)!!!

And Because laptop is win8 compliant and you create decision to use native driver (instead acpi one) it is not possible to control display brightness without tweeks in kernel cmdline.

As I wrote I would rather to use native dell-laptop driver for controlling brightness, but it is not possible.

So how to solve this problem?

Quick solution would be to set use_native_backlight false for some Dell laptops which means, that acpi video will be used and in this case intel i915 driver will *not* drop backlight change request.

Another solution could be to disable check in dell_laptop driver and add use_native_backlight=0 to hooks. But this create two backlight interfaces (which is not good), but only way (for now) how to make dell_laptop working again.

Better and maybe only one proper solution would be to teach intel drm i915 driver to not drop backlight change request for Dell laptops (or all??). (This allows to work both acpi video and dell_laptop drivers without any change and with *any* value in param use_native_backlight). I think that problematic code is in function asle_set_backlight() in file intel_opregion.c (but I'm not sure). My idea is that "drop" event function it is caused by this commit 0b9f7d93ca6109048a4eb06332b666b6e29df4fe (but I'm not sure).

At least something must be done as I think that I'm not only one who has Dell laptop and brightness configuration is really important...

Quoted 7 lines
Quoted 5 lines

I don't understand your problem, the kernel is selecting the i915 backlight driver, making that the only one available to userspace, so the one problem you state with the i915 driver, that it is "raw" is not an issue, as userspace will pick it when it is the only one.

It is not only one.

Are you sure, if you do not specify any commandline parameters, then neither dell-laptop nor acpi-video should register a backlight interface.

dell-laptop.c has:

#ifdef CONFIG_ACPI

        /* In the event of an ACPI backlight being
        available,

don't * register the platform controller.

         */
        
        if (acpi_video_backlight_support())
        
                return 0;

#endif

And acpi_video_backlight_support() will (normally) return true on acpi-backlight capable systems independent of use_native_backlight.

And drivers/acpi/video.c has this:

        /* no warning message if acpi_backlight=vendor or
        a

quirk is used */ if
(!acpi_video_verify_backlight_support())

                return;

...

bool acpi_video_verify_backlight_support(void)
{

        if (acpi_osi_is_win8() &&

acpi_video_use_native_backlight() && backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW)) return false;

Quoted 6 lines
        return acpi_video_backlight_support();

}

So unlike the check in dell-laptop this one does depend on the use_native_backlight setting.

It depends (see my previous mail). Here is code:

static bool acpi_video_use_native_backlight(void) {

	if (use_native_backlight_param != -1)
Quoted 7 lines
Quoted 7 lines
		return use_native_backlight_param;
	
	else
	
		return use_native_backlight_dmi;

}

Not sure what you're trying to say here, the default for this is 1, so if you don't specify anything, then this:

bool acpi_video_verify_backlight_support(void)

{
        if (acpi_osi_is_win8() &&
acpi_video_use_native_backlight() &&
backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW)) return false;
        return acpi_video_backlight_support();
}
Quoted 5 lines

Will return false, and you won't get an acpi_video0 backlight interface, only the intel_backlight one, and everything should just work (except for the turning off on low settings).

When I do not specify param acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() will return false because acpi_osi_is_win8() returns true.

Quoted 3 lines

Have you tried not using any kernel commandline options? What happens?

Yes, then kernel create two backlight devices: one raw from i915 module and one normal from dell-laptop module. Userspace will pick dell-laptop for using. And due to commit 0b9f7d93 (which disabling events when acpi_video_verify_backlight_support returns false) dell-laptop backlight not working. So controlling brightness from userspace does not work.

Quoted 64 lines
Quoted 64 lines
Quoted 50 lines
Quoted 21 lines

I've just checked 3.17 on my E6430 and there this works as it should, I only get the intel_backlight in /sys/class/backlight

Quoted 8 lines

Also dell-laptop (or acpi video) backlight interface is created (depends on use_native_backlight param). And userspace will pick dell-laptop (or acpi video) to use (which cannot change brightness).

Quoted 2 lines

Why would you want to use dell-laptop despite the i915 driver working fine ?

Quoted 8 lines

i915 working only if I compile kernel without acpi video dell- laptop support (distributions compile kernel with these drivers) and i915 is not good for usage. First it provides more then thousand brightness levels and lot of (with low numbers) completely turn display off. And if userspace map these thousand levels into 5-10 levels (as nobody want to press brightness key up/down 1000x) two lowest levels cause display off.

Quoted 6 lines

More and more laptops will only have working backlight control at all when using i915, so userspace will need to learn to better deal with backlight controls with these ranges. And low pwm levels turning the backlight of is normal for raw interfaces, if userspace does not want this, then they should not go so low.

So then kernel should report which low levels turn backlight off so userspace will know which levels should avoid. But this is not implemented yet.

Quoted 4 lines

I suggest that you file a bug against your desktop environment that it is not using the backlight controls in an optimal manner, from the kernel pov everything is working fine.

Once I will know which levels should not DE use I can report bug.

Quoted 9 lines
Quoted 4 lines

With acpi
video and dell-laptop driver levels are mapped into small level space in perfect way. So this is reason I want to use dell-laptop for controlling brightness.

If you want to use dell-laptop, specify acpi_backlight=vendor on the kernel commandline, that will give you dell_laptop + intel_backlight as backlight interfaces, and userspace should prefer dell_laptop.

Quoted 4 lines

With acpi_backlight=vendor dell-laptop is not working, see my previous mail. In this case intel i915 drm driver ignore bios events for changing brightness. And userspace prefer to use dell_laptop which do nothing!

Ok, that problematic commit is:

ACPI / i915: ignore firmware requests for backlight change 0b9f7d93ca6109048a4eb06332b666b6e29df4fe

When I reverted it acpi_backlight=vendor started working again (via dell_laptop). Without reverting that commit dell_laptop simply do nothing.

Quoted 5 lines
Quoted 2 lines

Tested and on my laptop Dell Latitude E6440 driver dell_laptop does not work with above commit.

Hmm, interesting, so when dell-laptop registers and makes a few calls using the dell-laptop acpi interface,

No, dell-laptop is *not* acpi driver. See my first mail. It uses dell dcdbas driver which makes SMI calls for SMBIOS. But it (on my machine! no idea about other older once) just forward brightness change to intel driver. And it has useful brightness levels (no lot of levels which turning display off).

And making SMI calls can be done also from userspace. There is tool dellLcdBrightness in libsmbios package which for brightness. And commit 0b9f7d93ca6109048a4eb06332b666b6e29df4fe broke functionality of that tool.

Quoted 6 lines

then you either stop getting key press events through the acpi-video-bus, or dell-laptop is just a shim around the i915 interface with the firmware calling into itself on these models. Given that dell-laptop is ancient, the shim story is not that far fetched.

Brightness Fn keys are reported by WMI (dell-wmi driver), so they working without dell-laptop and acpi video drivers perfectly.

Quoted 4 lines

Do you still get an on screen display showing the brightness when using a kernel without this patch + acpi_backlight=vendor ?

Brightness Fn keys are reported to userspace (from WMI input device) with any combination of video.use_native_backlight and acpi_backlight kernel params.

Quoted 3 lines

Regards,

Hans

Signature · 2 lines
Pali Rohár
[email protected]
#8 lore raw

Hi,

Quoted 223 lines · Pali Rohár
Quoted 213 lines · On Wednesday 24 September 2014 14:04:36 Hans de Goede wrote:

Hi,

Quoted 191 lines · Pali Rohár
Quoted 190 lines · On Wednesday 24 September 2014 10:59:41 Pali Rohár wrote:
Quoted 175 lines · On Wednesday 24 September 2014 10:19:38 Hans de Goede wrote:

Hi,

Quoted 120 lines · Pali Rohár
Quoted 119 lines · On Tuesday 23 September 2014 22:31:31 you wrote:

Hi,

Quoted 115 lines · Pali Rohár

Hello,

after big changes in acpi video/i915 code I cannot change display brightness on my Dell Latitude E6440 with kernel 3.17-rc6. With kernel 3.13 everything worked fine.

More information about this problem:

For configuring brightness on Dell laptops there are 4
ways: 1) via acpi video driver
2) via dell-laptop driver
3) via i915 drm driver
4) from userspace with special dell SMI call

(e.g with program dellLcdBrightness from libsmbios package)

Methods 2) and 4) are same, both making special SMI call and Bios handing this request (just 2 is from kernel and 4 from userspace)

Method 1) via acpi video driver working, but is not perfect. Driver can be used to change brightness (but only some levels, probably this depends on acpi/DSDT tables), but cannot be used to retrieve current brightness (when BIOS/SMI change brightness acpi driver report old incorrect value). So I prefer dell-laptop driver instead acpi video.

Method 3) working even with 3.17-rc6 kernel but because that backlight device exported by i915 is marked as raw, desktop programs prefer to use other devices.

Moreover it looks like that methods 1) 2) and 4) just forward request to method 3). So in any cased brightness is changed by i915 drm driver.

I'm not sure (correct me if I'm wrong!) but I think that intel i915 drm driver accept changes (file intel_opregion.c) only if acpi function acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() returns true.

Function acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() returns true iff: function acpi_video_backlight_support() returns true AND at least one of these functions returns false: acpi_osi_is_win8() acpi_video_use_native_backlight() backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW)

On my notebook acpi_osi_is_win8() returns true (as is win8 compliant), backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW) returns true as I'm using intel i915 drm driver with raw backlight device and acpi_video_use_native_backlight() returns true/false depending on "video.use_native_backlight" kernel param. Default is true.

So if I want to have working acpi video driver with display brightness support I need to boot kernel with
param: "video.use_native_backlight=0". I tested it with kernel 3.17-rc6 and this param really enabled display brightness support via acpi video driver -- which is good.

Driver dell-laptop creating backligh device for brightness control only if acpi_video_backlight_support() returns false. There is complicated condition for it and when kernel is booted with "video.use_native_backlight=0" that function returns true.

So conclusion is: With current code in kernel 3.17-rc6 it is not possible to control brightness of display with native driver dell-laptop on Dell Latitude E6440 (and probably on others too)!!!

And Because laptop is win8 compliant and you create decision to use native driver (instead acpi one) it is not possible to control display brightness without tweeks in kernel cmdline.

As I wrote I would rather to use native dell-laptop driver for controlling brightness, but it is not possible.

So how to solve this problem?

Quick solution would be to set use_native_backlight false for some Dell laptops which means, that acpi video will be used and in this case intel i915 driver will *not* drop backlight change request.

Another solution could be to disable check in dell_laptop driver and add use_native_backlight=0 to hooks. But this create two backlight interfaces (which is not good), but only way (for now) how to make dell_laptop working again.

Better and maybe only one proper solution would be to teach intel drm i915 driver to not drop backlight change request for Dell laptops (or all??). (This allows to work both acpi video and dell_laptop drivers without any change and with *any* value in param use_native_backlight). I think that problematic code is in function asle_set_backlight() in file intel_opregion.c (but I'm not sure). My idea is that "drop" event function it is caused by this commit 0b9f7d93ca6109048a4eb06332b666b6e29df4fe (but I'm not sure).

At least something must be done as I think that I'm not only one who has Dell laptop and brightness configuration is really important...

Quoted 7 lines
Quoted 5 lines

I don't understand your problem, the kernel is selecting the i915 backlight driver, making that the only one available to userspace, so the one problem you state with the i915 driver, that it is "raw" is not an issue, as userspace will pick it when it is the only one.

It is not only one.

Are you sure, if you do not specify any commandline parameters, then neither dell-laptop nor acpi-video should register a backlight interface.

dell-laptop.c has:

#ifdef CONFIG_ACPI

        /* In the event of an ACPI backlight being
        available,

don't * register the platform controller.

         */
        
        if (acpi_video_backlight_support())
        
                return 0;

#endif

And acpi_video_backlight_support() will (normally) return true on acpi-backlight capable systems independent of use_native_backlight.

And drivers/acpi/video.c has this:

        /* no warning message if acpi_backlight=vendor or
        a

quirk is used */ if
(!acpi_video_verify_backlight_support())

                return;

...

bool acpi_video_verify_backlight_support(void)
{

        if (acpi_osi_is_win8() &&

acpi_video_use_native_backlight() && backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW)) return false;

Quoted 6 lines
        return acpi_video_backlight_support();

}

So unlike the check in dell-laptop this one does depend on the use_native_backlight setting.

It depends (see my previous mail). Here is code:

static bool acpi_video_use_native_backlight(void) {

	if (use_native_backlight_param != -1)
Quoted 7 lines
Quoted 7 lines
		return use_native_backlight_param;
	
	else
	
		return use_native_backlight_dmi;

}

Not sure what you're trying to say here, the default for this is 1, so if you don't specify anything, then this:

bool acpi_video_verify_backlight_support(void)

{
        if (acpi_osi_is_win8() &&
acpi_video_use_native_backlight() &&
backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW)) return false;
        return acpi_video_backlight_support();
}
Quoted 5 lines

Will return false, and you won't get an acpi_video0 backlight interface, only the intel_backlight one, and everything should just work (except for the turning off on low settings).

When I do not specify param acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() will return false because acpi_osi_is_win8() returns true.

Quoted 6 lines
Quoted 3 lines

Have you tried not using any kernel commandline options? What happens?

Yes, then kernel create two backlight devices: one raw from i915 module and one normal from dell-laptop module.

Erm, no it won't, unless you've other kernel commandline options active as well. dell-laptop contains this:

#ifdef CONFIG_ACPI
        /* In the event of an ACPI backlight being available, don't
         * register the platform controller.
         */

        if (acpi_video_backlight_support())
                return 0;

#endif

And acpi_video_backlight_support() will still report 1, so dell-laptop will not register a backlight interface unless your meddling with things / config options.

Quoted 5 lines

Userspace will
pick dell-laptop for using. And due to commit 0b9f7d93 (which disabling events when acpi_video_verify_backlight_support returns false) dell-laptop backlight not working. So controlling brightness from userspace does not work.

Right, so stop doing whatever you are doing which causes dell-laptop to register a backlight interface as by default it will not do that, and your problem is gone.

Quoted 91 lines
Quoted 64 lines
Quoted 64 lines
Quoted 50 lines
Quoted 21 lines

I've just checked 3.17 on my E6430 and there this works as it should, I only get the intel_backlight in /sys/class/backlight

Quoted 8 lines

Also dell-laptop (or acpi video) backlight interface is created (depends on use_native_backlight param). And userspace will pick dell-laptop (or acpi video) to use (which cannot change brightness).

Quoted 2 lines

Why would you want to use dell-laptop despite the i915 driver working fine ?

Quoted 8 lines

i915 working only if I compile kernel without acpi video dell- laptop support (distributions compile kernel with these drivers) and i915 is not good for usage. First it provides more then thousand brightness levels and lot of (with low numbers) completely turn display off. And if userspace map these thousand levels into 5-10 levels (as nobody want to press brightness key up/down 1000x) two lowest levels cause display off.

Quoted 6 lines

More and more laptops will only have working backlight control at all when using i915, so userspace will need to learn to better deal with backlight controls with these ranges. And low pwm levels turning the backlight of is normal for raw interfaces, if userspace does not want this, then they should not go so low.

So then kernel should report which low levels turn backlight off so userspace will know which levels should avoid. But this is not implemented yet.

Quoted 4 lines

I suggest that you file a bug against your desktop environment that it is not using the backlight controls in an optimal manner, from the kernel pov everything is working fine.

Once I will know which levels should not DE use I can report bug.

Quoted 9 lines
Quoted 4 lines

With acpi
video and dell-laptop driver levels are mapped into small level space in perfect way. So this is reason I want to use dell-laptop for controlling brightness.

If you want to use dell-laptop, specify acpi_backlight=vendor on the kernel commandline, that will give you dell_laptop + intel_backlight as backlight interfaces, and userspace should prefer dell_laptop.

Quoted 4 lines

With acpi_backlight=vendor dell-laptop is not working, see my previous mail. In this case intel i915 drm driver ignore bios events for changing brightness. And userspace prefer to use dell_laptop which do nothing!

Ok, that problematic commit is:

ACPI / i915: ignore firmware requests for backlight change 0b9f7d93ca6109048a4eb06332b666b6e29df4fe

When I reverted it acpi_backlight=vendor started working again (via dell_laptop). Without reverting that commit dell_laptop simply do nothing.

Quoted 5 lines
Quoted 2 lines

Tested and on my laptop Dell Latitude E6440 driver dell_laptop does not work with above commit.

Hmm, interesting, so when dell-laptop registers and makes a few calls using the dell-laptop acpi interface,

No, dell-laptop is *not* acpi driver. See my first mail. It uses dell dcdbas driver which makes SMI calls for SMBIOS. But it (on my machine! no idea about other older once) just forward brightness change to intel driver. And it has useful brightness levels (no lot of levels which turning display off).

And making SMI calls can be done also from userspace. There is tool dellLcdBrightness in libsmbios package which for brightness. And commit 0b9f7d93ca6109048a4eb06332b666b6e29df4fe broke functionality of that tool.

Quoted 6 lines

then you either stop getting key press events through the acpi-video-bus, or dell-laptop is just a shim around the i915 interface with the firmware calling into itself on these models. Given that dell-laptop is ancient, the shim story is not that far fetched.

Brightness Fn keys are reported by WMI (dell-wmi driver), so they working without dell-laptop and acpi video drivers perfectly.

Quoted 8 lines
Quoted 4 lines

Do you still get an on screen display showing the brightness when using a kernel without this patch + acpi_backlight=vendor ?

Brightness Fn keys are reported to userspace (from WMI input device) with any combination of video.use_native_backlight and acpi_backlight kernel params.

Ok, so the dell-laptop interface is just an obsolete wrapper around the i915 opregion code, which shows that the right interface to use is the i915 one, which we do if you don't specify any kernel commandline parameters, case closed.

Regards,

Hans
_______________________________________________
Intel-gfx mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/intel-gfx

#9 lore raw
Quoted 9 lines · On Wednesday 24 September 2014 16:34:21 Hans de Goede wrote:

Hi,

Quoted 6 lines · Pali Rohár
Quoted 5 lines · On Wednesday 24 September 2014 14:04:36 Hans de Goede wrote:

Hi,

Quoted 2 lines · Pali Rohár
Quoted 1 line · On Wednesday 24 September 2014 10:59:41 Pali Rohár wrote:

On Wednesday 24 September 2014 10:19:38 Hans de Goede

Quoted 243 lines · wrote:
Quoted 227 lines
Quoted 214 lines
Quoted 195 lines
Quoted 195 lines
Quoted 181 lines

Hi,

Quoted 124 lines · Pali Rohár
Quoted 123 lines · On Tuesday 23 September 2014 22:31:31 you wrote:

Hi,

Quoted 119 lines · Pali Rohár

Hello,

after big changes in acpi video/i915 code I cannot change display brightness on my Dell Latitude E6440 with kernel 3.17-rc6. With kernel 3.13 everything worked fine.

More information about this problem:

For configuring brightness on Dell laptops there are 4 ways: 1) via acpi video driver
2) via dell-laptop driver
3) via i915 drm driver
4) from userspace with special dell SMI call

(e.g with program dellLcdBrightness from libsmbios package)

Methods 2) and 4) are same, both making special SMI call and Bios handing this request (just 2 is from kernel and 4 from userspace)

Method 1) via acpi video driver working, but is not perfect. Driver can be used to change brightness (but only some levels, probably this depends on acpi/DSDT tables), but cannot be used to retrieve current brightness (when BIOS/SMI change brightness acpi driver report old incorrect value). So I prefer dell-laptop driver instead acpi video.

Method 3) working even with 3.17-rc6 kernel but because that backlight device exported by i915 is marked as raw, desktop programs prefer to use other devices.

Moreover it looks like that methods 1) 2) and 4) just forward request to method 3). So in any cased brightness is changed by i915 drm driver.

I'm not sure (correct me if I'm wrong!) but I think that intel i915 drm driver accept changes (file intel_opregion.c) only if acpi function acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() returns true.

Function acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() returns true iff: function acpi_video_backlight_support() returns true AND at least one of these functions returns false:
acpi_osi_is_win8() acpi_video_use_native_backlight() backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW)

On my notebook acpi_osi_is_win8() returns true (as is win8 compliant), backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW) returns true as I'm using intel i915 drm driver with raw backlight device and acpi_video_use_native_backlight() returns true/false depending on
"video.use_native_backlight" kernel param. Default is true.

So if I want to have working acpi video driver with display brightness support I need to boot kernel with
param: "video.use_native_backlight=0". I tested it with kernel 3.17-rc6 and this param really enabled display brightness support via acpi video driver -- which is good.

Driver dell-laptop creating backligh device for brightness control only if acpi_video_backlight_support() returns false. There is complicated condition for it and when kernel is booted with "video.use_native_backlight=0" that function returns true.

So conclusion is: With current code in kernel 3.17-rc6 it is not possible to control brightness of display with native driver dell-laptop on Dell Latitude E6440 (and probably on others too)!!!

And Because laptop is win8 compliant and you create decision to use native driver (instead acpi one) it is not possible to control display brightness without tweeks in kernel cmdline.

As I wrote I would rather to use native dell-laptop driver for controlling brightness, but it is not possible.

So how to solve this problem?

Quick solution would be to set use_native_backlight false for some Dell laptops which means, that acpi video will be used and in this case intel i915 driver will *not* drop backlight change request.

Another solution could be to disable check in dell_laptop driver and add use_native_backlight=0 to hooks. But this create two backlight interfaces (which is not good), but only way (for now) how to make dell_laptop working again.

Better and maybe only one proper solution would be to teach intel drm i915 driver to not drop backlight change request for Dell laptops (or all??). (This allows to work both acpi video and dell_laptop drivers without any change and with *any* value in param use_native_backlight). I think that problematic code is in function asle_set_backlight() in file
intel_opregion.c (but I'm not sure). My idea is that "drop" event function it is caused by this commit 0b9f7d93ca6109048a4eb06332b666b6e29df4fe (but I'm not sure).

At least something must be done as I think that I'm not only one who has Dell laptop and brightness configuration is really important...

Quoted 8 lines
Quoted 6 lines

I don't understand your problem, the kernel is selecting the i915 backlight driver, making that the only one available to userspace, so the one problem you state with the i915 driver, that it is "raw" is not an issue, as userspace will pick it when it is the only one.

It is not only one.

Are you sure, if you do not specify any commandline parameters, then neither dell-laptop nor acpi-video should register a backlight interface.

dell-laptop.c has:

#ifdef CONFIG_ACPI

        /* In the event of an ACPI backlight being
        available,

don't * register the platform controller.

         */
        
        if (acpi_video_backlight_support())
        
                return 0;

#endif

And acpi_video_backlight_support() will (normally) return true on acpi-backlight capable systems independent of use_native_backlight.

And drivers/acpi/video.c has this:

        /* no warning message if acpi_backlight=vendor
        or a

quirk is used */ if
(!acpi_video_verify_backlight_support())

                return;

...

bool acpi_video_verify_backlight_support(void) {

        if (acpi_osi_is_win8() &&

acpi_video_use_native_backlight() && backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW)) return false;

Quoted 6 lines
        return acpi_video_backlight_support();

}

So unlike the check in dell-laptop this one does depend on the use_native_backlight setting.

It depends (see my previous mail). Here is code:

static bool acpi_video_use_native_backlight(void) {

	if (use_native_backlight_param != -1)
Quoted 7 lines
Quoted 7 lines
		return use_native_backlight_param;
	
	else
	
		return use_native_backlight_dmi;

}

Not sure what you're trying to say here, the default for this is 1, so if you don't specify anything, then this:

bool acpi_video_verify_backlight_support(void)
{

        if (acpi_osi_is_win8() &&

acpi_video_use_native_backlight() && backlight_device_registered(BACKLIGHT_RAW)) return false;

Quoted 8 lines
        return acpi_video_backlight_support();

}

Will return false, and you won't get an acpi_video0 backlight interface, only the intel_backlight one, and everything should just work (except for the turning off on low settings).

When I do not specify param acpi_video_verify_backlight_support() will return false because acpi_osi_is_win8() returns true.

Quoted 5 lines
Quoted 2 lines

Have you tried not using any kernel commandline options? What happens?

Yes, then kernel create two backlight devices: one raw from i915 module and one normal from dell-laptop module.

Erm, no it won't, unless you've other kernel commandline options active as well. dell-laptop contains this:

#ifdef CONFIG_ACPI
        /* In the event of an ACPI backlight being available,
don't * register the platform controller.
         */

        if (acpi_video_backlight_support())
                return 0;
Quoted 6 lines

#endif

And acpi_video_backlight_support() will still report 1, so dell-laptop will not register a backlight interface unless your meddling with things / config options.

Right, sorry for this. Without *any* kernel cmdline only intel backlight is registered and userspace will pick up it.

Quoted 114 lines
Quoted 6 lines

Userspace will
pick dell-laptop for using. And due to commit 0b9f7d93 (which disabling events when acpi_video_verify_backlight_support returns false) dell-laptop backlight not working. So controlling brightness from userspace does not work.

Right, so stop doing whatever you are doing which causes dell-laptop to register a backlight interface as by default it will not do that, and your problem is gone.

Quoted 95 lines
Quoted 66 lines
Quoted 66 lines
Quoted 52 lines
Quoted 22 lines

I've just checked 3.17 on my E6430 and there this works as it should, I only get the intel_backlight in /sys/class/backlight

Quoted 8 lines

Also dell-laptop (or acpi video) backlight interface is created (depends on use_native_backlight param). And userspace will pick dell-laptop (or acpi video) to use (which cannot change brightness).

Quoted 2 lines

Why would you want to use dell-laptop despite the i915 driver working fine ?

Quoted 9 lines

i915 working only if I compile kernel without acpi video dell- laptop support (distributions compile kernel with these drivers) and i915 is not good for usage. First it provides more then thousand brightness levels and lot of (with low numbers) completely turn display off. And if userspace map these thousand levels into 5-10 levels (as nobody want to press brightness key up/down 1000x) two lowest levels cause display off.

Quoted 6 lines

More and more laptops will only have working backlight control at all when using i915, so userspace will need to learn to better deal with backlight controls with these ranges. And low pwm levels turning the backlight of is normal for raw interfaces, if userspace does not want this, then they should not go so low.

So then kernel should report which low levels turn backlight off so userspace will know which levels should avoid. But this is not implemented yet.

Quoted 4 lines

I suggest that you file a bug against your desktop environment that it is not using the backlight controls in an optimal manner, from the kernel pov everything is working fine.

Once I will know which levels should not DE use I can report bug.

Quoted 10 lines
Quoted 4 lines

With acpi
video and dell-laptop driver levels are mapped into small level space in perfect way. So this is reason I want to use dell-laptop for controlling brightness.

If you want to use dell-laptop, specify acpi_backlight=vendor on the kernel commandline, that will give you dell_laptop + intel_backlight as backlight interfaces, and userspace should prefer dell_laptop.

Quoted 4 lines

With acpi_backlight=vendor dell-laptop is not working, see my previous mail. In this case intel i915 drm driver ignore bios events for changing brightness. And userspace prefer to use dell_laptop which do nothing!

Ok, that problematic commit is:

ACPI / i915: ignore firmware requests for backlight change 0b9f7d93ca6109048a4eb06332b666b6e29df4fe

When I reverted it acpi_backlight=vendor started working again (via dell_laptop). Without reverting that commit dell_laptop simply do nothing.

Quoted 5 lines
Quoted 2 lines

Tested and on my laptop Dell Latitude E6440 driver dell_laptop does not work with above commit.

Hmm, interesting, so when dell-laptop registers and makes a few calls using the dell-laptop acpi interface,

No, dell-laptop is *not* acpi driver. See my first mail. It uses dell dcdbas driver which makes SMI calls for SMBIOS. But it (on my machine! no idea about other older once) just forward brightness change to intel driver. And it has useful brightness levels (no lot of levels which turning display off).

And making SMI calls can be done also from userspace. There is tool dellLcdBrightness in libsmbios package which for brightness. And commit 0b9f7d93ca6109048a4eb06332b666b6e29df4fe broke functionality of that tool.

Quoted 5 lines

then you either stop getting key press events through the acpi-video-bus, or dell-laptop is just a shim around the i915 interface with the firmware calling into itself on these models. Given that dell-laptop is ancient, the shim story is not that far fetched.

Brightness Fn keys are reported by WMI (dell-wmi driver), so they working without dell-laptop and acpi video drivers perfectly.

Quoted 7 lines
Quoted 3 lines

Do you still get an on screen display showing the brightness when using a kernel without this patch + acpi_backlight=vendor ?

Brightness Fn keys are reported to userspace (from WMI input device) with any combination of video.use_native_backlight and acpi_backlight kernel params.

Quoted 8 lines

Ok, so the dell-laptop interface is just an obsolete wrapper around the i915 opregion code, which shows that the right interface to use is the i915 one, which we do if you don't specify any kernel commandline parameters, case closed.

Regards,

Hans

Nope, its not closed.

Still i915 interface has problem with setting backlight. It exports lot of levels which turning display off. Which breaking exiting applications for configuring display brightness. This is still big regression as black screen is not want people want to see.

Driver dell-laptop has exported only few - not thousands level (which is insane) and only usefull levels (not lot of levels which turn display off).

So for this reason using i915 backlight interface is not possible and also Dell (for E6440) set kernel param acpi_backlight=vendor to use dell_laptop module for controlling brightness.

On my laptop E6440 is better for using dell-laptop and not acpi or i915.

Signature · 2 lines
Pali Rohár
[email protected]

_______________________________________________
Intel-gfx mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/intel-gfx

#10 lore raw

Hi Hans,

Thanks for following up and explaining the situation to Pali.

Quoted 22 lines · Pali Rohár
Quoted 8 lines · On Wednesday 24 September 2014 16:34:21 Hans de Goede wrote:

Ok, so the dell-laptop interface is just an obsolete wrapper around the i915 opregion code, which shows that the right interface to use is the i915 one, which we do if you don't specify any kernel commandline parameters, case closed.

Regards,

Hans

Nope, its not closed.

Still i915 interface has problem with setting backlight. It exports lot of levels which turning display off. Which breaking exiting applications for configuring display brightness. This is still big regression as black screen is not want people want to see.

Driver dell-laptop has exported only few - not thousands level (which is insane) and only usefull levels (not lot of levels which turn display off).

Quoted 6 lines

So for this reason using i915 backlight interface is not possible and also Dell (for E6440) set kernel param acpi_backlight=vendor to use dell_laptop module for controlling brightness.

On my laptop E6440 is better for using dell-laptop and not acpi or i915.

Hi Pali,

Please test this patch:

drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c +19 -5
index ca52ad2ae7d1..15534345bd57 100644
@@ -396,6 +396,24 @@ int intel_opregion_notify_adapter(struct drm_device *dev, pci_power_t state)
 	return -EINVAL;
 }
 
+/*
+ * Some of the Thinkpads' firmware will issue a backlight change operation
+ * region request unconditionally on AC plug/unplug, this is undesirable and
+ * should be ignored. Then there is a Dell laptop whose vendor backlight
+ * interface also makes use of operation region request to change backlight
+ * level and we have to keep it work. The rule used here is: if the vendor
+ * backlight interface is not in use and the ACPI backlight interface is
+ * broken, we ignore the requests; oterwise, we keep processing them.
+ */
+static bool should_ignore_backlight_request(void)
+{
+	if (acpi_video_backlight_support() &&
+	    !acpi_video_verify_backlight_support())
+		return true;
+
+	return false;
+}
+
 static u32 asle_set_backlight(struct drm_device *dev, u32 bclp)
 {
 	struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv = dev->dev_private;
@@ -404,11 +422,7 @@ static u32 asle_set_backlight(struct drm_device *dev, u32 bclp)
 
 	DRM_DEBUG_DRIVER("bclp = 0x%08x\n", bclp);
 
-	/*
-	 * If the acpi_video interface is not supposed to be used, don't
-	 * bother processing backlight level change requests from firmware.
-	 */
-	if (!acpi_video_verify_backlight_support()) {
+	if (should_ignore_backlight_request()) {
 		DRM_DEBUG_KMS("opregion backlight request ignored\n");
 		return 0;
 	}
#11 lore raw
Quoted 33 lines · On Thursday 25 September 2014 05:15:35 Aaron Lu wrote:

Hi Hans,

Thanks for following up and explaining the situation to Pali.

Quoted 28 lines · Pali Rohár
Quoted 9 lines · On Wednesday 24 September 2014 16:34:21 Hans de Goede wrote:

Ok, so the dell-laptop interface is just an obsolete wrapper around the i915 opregion code, which shows that the right interface to use is the i915 one, which we do if you don't specify any kernel commandline parameters, case closed.

Regards,

Hans

Nope, its not closed.

Still i915 interface has problem with setting backlight. It exports lot of levels which turning display off. Which breaking exiting applications for configuring display brightness. This is still big regression as black screen is not want people want to see.

Driver dell-laptop has exported only few - not thousands level (which is insane) and only usefull levels (not lot of levels which turn display off).

So for this reason using i915 backlight interface is not possible and also Dell (for E6440) set kernel param acpi_backlight=vendor to use dell_laptop module for controlling brightness.

Quoted 7 lines
Quoted 2 lines

On my laptop E6440 is better for using dell-laptop and not acpi or i915.

Hi Pali,

Please test this patch:

Hi! this patch fixing this problem. With acpi_backlight=vendor dell-laptop will register backlight interface which is working again. Also userspace application dellLcdBrightness is working now without problem.

Can you going to send this patch also to stable 3.16 branch? As it fixing commit 0b9f7d93ca6109048a4eb06332b666b6e29df4fe.

Quoted 45 lines
(quoted diff) +0 -0

b/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c index
ca52ad2ae7d1..15534345bd57 100644

drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c +2 -0
@@ -396,6 +396,24 @@ int intel_opregion_notify_adapter(struct
 drm_device *dev, pci_power_t state) return -EINVAL;
 }
 
+/*
+ * Some of the Thinkpads' firmware will issue a backlight

change operation + * region request unconditionally on AC plug/unplug, this is undesirable and + * should be ignored. Then there is a Dell laptop whose vendor backlight + * interface also makes use of operation region request to change backlight + * level and we have to keep it work. The rule used here is: if the vendor + * backlight interface is not in use and the ACPI backlight interface is + * broken, we ignore the requests; oterwise, we keep processing them. + */

drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c +9 -0
+static bool should_ignore_backlight_request(void)
+{
+	if (acpi_video_backlight_support() &&
+	    !acpi_video_verify_backlight_support())
+		return true;
+
+	return false;
+}
+
 static u32 asle_set_backlight(struct drm_device *dev, u32

bclp) {

drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c +0 -2
 	struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv = dev->dev_private;
@@ -404,11 +422,7 @@ static u32 asle_set_backlight(struct
 drm_device *dev, u32 bclp)
 
 	DRM_DEBUG_DRIVER("bclp = 0x%08x\n", bclp);
 
-	/*
-	 * If the acpi_video interface is not supposed to be used,

don't - * bother processing backlight level change requests
from firmware. - */

drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c +1 -1
-	if (!acpi_video_verify_backlight_support()) {
+	if (should_ignore_backlight_request()) {
 		DRM_DEBUG_KMS("opregion backlight request ignored\n");
 		return 0;
 	}
Signature · 2 lines
Pali Rohár
[email protected]
#12 lore raw

PATCH 1/1 ACPI / i915: Update the condition to ignore firmware backlight change request

Some of the Thinkpads' firmware will issue a backlight change request through i915 operation region unconditionally on AC plug/unplug, the backlight level used is arbitrary and thus should be ignored. This is handled by commit 0b9f7d93ca61 (ACPI / i915: ignore firmware requests for backlight change). Then there is a Dell laptop whose vendor backlight interface also makes use of operation region to change backlight level and with the above commit, that interface no long works. The condition used to ignore the backlight change request from firmware is thus changed to: if the vendor backlight interface is not in use and the ACPI backlight interface is broken, we ignore the requests; oterwise, we keep processing them.

Reference: https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/9/23/854

Reported-and-tested-by Pali Rohár <[email protected]>
Cc <[email protected]> # v3.16 and later
---
 drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c | 16 +++++++++++-----
 1 file changed, 11 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c +11 -5
index ca52ad2ae7d1..d8de1d5140a7 100644
@@ -396,6 +396,16 @@ int intel_opregion_notify_adapter(struct drm_device *dev, pci_power_t state)
 	return -EINVAL;
 }
 
+/*
+ * If the vendor backlight interface is not in use and ACPI backlight interface
+ * is broken, do not bother processing backlight change requests from firmware.
+ */
+static bool should_ignore_backlight_request(void)
+{
+	return acpi_video_backlight_support() &&
+	       !acpi_video_verify_backlight_support();
+}
+
 static u32 asle_set_backlight(struct drm_device *dev, u32 bclp)
 {
 	struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv = dev->dev_private;
@@ -404,11 +414,7 @@ static u32 asle_set_backlight(struct drm_device *dev, u32 bclp)
 
 	DRM_DEBUG_DRIVER("bclp = 0x%08x\n", bclp);
 
-	/*
-	 * If the acpi_video interface is not supposed to be used, don't
-	 * bother processing backlight level change requests from firmware.
-	 */
-	if (!acpi_video_verify_backlight_support()) {
+	if (should_ignore_backlight_request()) {
 		DRM_DEBUG_KMS("opregion backlight request ignored\n");
 		return 0;
 	}
Signature · 1 line
1.9.3
#13 lore raw

Re: [PATCH] ACPI / i915: Update the condition to ignore firmware backlight change request

Quoted 12 lines · Aaron Lu

Some of the Thinkpads' firmware will issue a backlight change request through i915 operation region unconditionally on AC plug/unplug, the backlight level used is arbitrary and thus should be ignored. This is handled by commit 0b9f7d93ca61 (ACPI / i915: ignore firmware requests for backlight change). Then there is a Dell laptop whose vendor backlight interface also makes use of operation region to change backlight level and with the above commit, that interface no long works. The condition used to ignore the backlight change request from firmware is thus changed to: if the vendor backlight interface is not in use and the ACPI backlight interface is broken, we ignore the requests; oterwise, we keep processing them.

Quoted 4 lines

Reference: https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/9/23/854

Reported-and-tested-by Pali Rohár <[email protected]>
Cc <[email protected]> # v3.16 and later

Daniel, any objections?

Quoted 39 lines
---
 drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c | 16 +++++++++++-----
 1 file changed, 11 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c +11 -5
index ca52ad2ae7d1..d8de1d5140a7 100644
@@ -396,6 +396,16 @@ int intel_opregion_notify_adapter(struct drm_device *dev, pci_power_t state)
 	return -EINVAL;
 }
 
+/*
+ * If the vendor backlight interface is not in use and ACPI backlight interface
+ * is broken, do not bother processing backlight change requests from firmware.
+ */
+static bool should_ignore_backlight_request(void)
+{
+	return acpi_video_backlight_support() &&
+	       !acpi_video_verify_backlight_support();
+}
+
 static u32 asle_set_backlight(struct drm_device *dev, u32 bclp)
 {
 	struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv = dev->dev_private;
@@ -404,11 +414,7 @@ static u32 asle_set_backlight(struct drm_device *dev, u32 bclp)
 
 	DRM_DEBUG_DRIVER("bclp = 0x%08x\n", bclp);
 
-	/*
-	 * If the acpi_video interface is not supposed to be used, don't
-	 * bother processing backlight level change requests from firmware.
-	 */
-	if (!acpi_video_verify_backlight_support()) {
+	if (should_ignore_backlight_request()) {
 		DRM_DEBUG_KMS("opregion backlight request ignored\n");
 		return 0;
 	}
Signature · 6 lines
I speak only for myself.
Rafael J. Wysocki, Intel Open Source Technology Center.
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#14 lore raw

Re: [PATCH] ACPI / i915: Update the condition to ignore firmware backlight change request

Quoted 13 lines · Rafael J. Wysocki
Quoted 12 lines · Aaron Lu

Some of the Thinkpads' firmware will issue a backlight change request through i915 operation region unconditionally on AC plug/unplug, the backlight level used is arbitrary and thus should be ignored. This is handled by commit 0b9f7d93ca61 (ACPI / i915: ignore firmware requests for backlight change). Then there is a Dell laptop whose vendor backlight interface also makes use of operation region to change backlight level and with the above commit, that interface no long works. The condition used to ignore the backlight change request from firmware is thus changed to: if the vendor backlight interface is not in use and the ACPI backlight interface is broken, we ignore the requests; oterwise, we keep processing them.

Quoted 6 lines
Quoted 4 lines

Reference: https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/9/23/854

Reported-and-tested-by Pali Rohár <[email protected]>
Cc <[email protected]> # v3.16 and later

Daniel, any objections?

Nope, ack from my side.
-Daniel

Quoted 44 lines
Quoted 40 lines
---
 drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c | 16 +++++++++++-----
 1 file changed, 11 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c +11 -5
index ca52ad2ae7d1..d8de1d5140a7 100644
@@ -396,6 +396,16 @@ int intel_opregion_notify_adapter(struct drm_device *dev, pci_power_t state)
 	return -EINVAL;
 }
 
+/*
+ * If the vendor backlight interface is not in use and ACPI backlight interface
+ * is broken, do not bother processing backlight change requests from firmware.
+ */
+static bool should_ignore_backlight_request(void)
+{
+	return acpi_video_backlight_support() &&
+	       !acpi_video_verify_backlight_support();
+}
+
 static u32 asle_set_backlight(struct drm_device *dev, u32 bclp)
 {
 	struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv = dev->dev_private;
@@ -404,11 +414,7 @@ static u32 asle_set_backlight(struct drm_device *dev, u32 bclp)
 
 	DRM_DEBUG_DRIVER("bclp = 0x%08x\n", bclp);
 
-	/*
-	 * If the acpi_video interface is not supposed to be used, don't
-	 * bother processing backlight level change requests from firmware.
-	 */
-	if (!acpi_video_verify_backlight_support()) {
+	if (should_ignore_backlight_request()) {
 		DRM_DEBUG_KMS("opregion backlight request ignored\n");
 		return 0;
 	}
Signature · 2 lines
I speak only for myself.
Rafael J. Wysocki, Intel Open Source Technology Center.
Signature · 7 lines
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
+41 (0) 79 365 57 48 - http://blog.ffwll.ch
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#15 lore raw
In reply to Aaron Lu
Quoted 53 lines · Aaron Lu

Hi Hans,

Thanks for following up and explaining the situation to Pali.

Quoted 22 lines · Pali Rohár
Quoted 8 lines · On Wednesday 24 September 2014 16:34:21 Hans de Goede wrote:

Ok, so the dell-laptop interface is just an obsolete wrapper around the i915 opregion code, which shows that the right interface to use is the i915 one, which we do if you don't specify any kernel commandline parameters, case closed.

Regards,

Hans

Nope, its not closed.

Still i915 interface has problem with setting backlight. It exports lot of levels which turning display off. Which breaking exiting applications for configuring display brightness. This is still big regression as black screen is not want people want to see.

Driver dell-laptop has exported only few - not thousands level (which is insane) and only usefull levels (not lot of levels which turn display off).

Quoted 6 lines

So for this reason using i915 backlight interface is not possible and also Dell (for E6440) set kernel param acpi_backlight=vendor to use dell_laptop module for controlling brightness.

On my laptop E6440 is better for using dell-laptop and not acpi or i915.

Hi Pali,

Please test this patch:

drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c +7 -0
index ca52ad2ae7d1..15534345bd57 100644
@@ -396,6 +396,24 @@ int intel_opregion_notify_adapter(struct drm_device *dev, pci_power_t state)
 	return -EINVAL;
 }
 
+/*
+ * Some of the Thinkpads' firmware will issue a backlight change operation
+ * region request unconditionally on AC plug/unplug, this is undesirable and
+ * should be ignored. Then there is a Dell laptop whose vendor backlight
+ * interface also makes use of operation region request to change backlight
+ * level and we have to keep it work. The rule used here is: if the vendor
+ * backlight interface is not in use and the ACPI backlight interface is

drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c int intel_opregion_notify_adapter(struct drm_device *dev, pci_power_t state) · line 415

Quoted 10 lines
drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c +10 -0
+ * broken, we ignore the requests; oterwise, we keep processing them.
+ */
+static bool should_ignore_backlight_request(void)
+{
+	if (acpi_video_backlight_support() &&
+	    !acpi_video_verify_backlight_support())
+		return true;
+
+	return false;
+}

Well, what about

	return acpi_video_backlight_support() && !acpi_video_verify_backlight_support();

?

Quoted 22 lines
drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c +2 -6
+
 static u32 asle_set_backlight(struct drm_device *dev, u32 bclp)
 {
 	struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv = dev->dev_private;
@@ -404,11 +422,7 @@ static u32 asle_set_backlight(struct drm_device *dev, u32 bclp)
 
 	DRM_DEBUG_DRIVER("bclp = 0x%08x\n", bclp);
 
-	/*
-	 * If the acpi_video interface is not supposed to be used, don't
-	 * bother processing backlight level change requests from firmware.
-	 */
-	if (!acpi_video_verify_backlight_support()) {
+	if (should_ignore_backlight_request()) {
 		DRM_DEBUG_KMS("opregion backlight request ignored\n");
 		return 0;
 	}
--

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Signature · 2 lines
I speak only for myself.
Rafael J. Wysocki, Intel Open Source Technology Center.
#16 lore raw
Quoted 67 lines · Rafael J. Wysocki
Quoted 53 lines · Aaron Lu

Hi Hans,

Thanks for following up and explaining the situation to Pali.

Quoted 22 lines · Pali Rohár
Quoted 8 lines · On Wednesday 24 September 2014 16:34:21 Hans de Goede wrote:

Ok, so the dell-laptop interface is just an obsolete wrapper around the i915 opregion code, which shows that the right interface to use is the i915 one, which we do if you don't specify any kernel commandline parameters, case closed.

Regards,

Hans

Nope, its not closed.

Still i915 interface has problem with setting backlight. It exports lot of levels which turning display off. Which breaking exiting applications for configuring display brightness. This is still big regression as black screen is not want people want to see.

Driver dell-laptop has exported only few - not thousands level (which is insane) and only usefull levels (not lot of levels which turn display off).

Quoted 6 lines

So for this reason using i915 backlight interface is not possible and also Dell (for E6440) set kernel param acpi_backlight=vendor to use dell_laptop module for controlling brightness.

On my laptop E6440 is better for using dell-laptop and not acpi or i915.

Hi Pali,

Please test this patch:

drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c +7 -0
index ca52ad2ae7d1..15534345bd57 100644
@@ -396,6 +396,24 @@ int intel_opregion_notify_adapter(struct drm_device *dev, pci_power_t state)
 	return -EINVAL;
 }
 
+/*
+ * Some of the Thinkpads' firmware will issue a backlight change operation
+ * region request unconditionally on AC plug/unplug, this is undesirable and
+ * should be ignored. Then there is a Dell laptop whose vendor backlight
+ * interface also makes use of operation region request to change backlight
+ * level and we have to keep it work. The rule used here is: if the vendor
+ * backlight interface is not in use and the ACPI backlight interface is

drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c int intel_opregion_notify_adapter(struct drm_device *dev, pci_power_t state) · line 415

Quoted 10 lines
drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c +10 -0
+ * broken, we ignore the requests; oterwise, we keep processing them.
+ */
+static bool should_ignore_backlight_request(void)
+{
+	if (acpi_video_backlight_support() &&
+	    !acpi_video_verify_backlight_support())
+		return true;
+
+	return false;
+}

Well, what about

Quoted 3 lines
	return acpi_video_backlight_support() && !acpi_video_verify_backlight_support();

?

Yes that's better.
Will send out a patch with this change, thanks for the suggestion.

-Aaron

Quoted 24 lines
Quoted 23 lines
drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c +2 -6
+
 static u32 asle_set_backlight(struct drm_device *dev, u32 bclp)
 {
 	struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv = dev->dev_private;
@@ -404,11 +422,7 @@ static u32 asle_set_backlight(struct drm_device *dev, u32 bclp)
 
 	DRM_DEBUG_DRIVER("bclp = 0x%08x\n", bclp);
 
-	/*
-	 * If the acpi_video interface is not supposed to be used, don't
-	 * bother processing backlight level change requests from firmware.
-	 */
-	if (!acpi_video_verify_backlight_support()) {
+	if (should_ignore_backlight_request()) {
 		DRM_DEBUG_KMS("opregion backlight request ignored\n");
 		return 0;
 	}
--

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Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/