Interfacing nvidia graphics cards and acpi brightness

[Peter Newman]

Hi

I started out tonight with the aim of adding a bug because my compaq 8510w brightness function keys have never worked under Ubuntu Gutsy and now not under Hardy Heron alpha 6 either.

However what I have found is that there is no bug to report :)

The gnome-power-manager works okay but doesn't change screen brightness.  I.e. hitting the function key does change the current value here:

 $ cat /proc/acpi/video/C14B/C15F/brightness

 levels:  100 51 30 37 44 51 58 65 72 79 86 93 100
 current: 65

Also adjusting the nvidia-settings brightness values actually changes the screen brightness (and the nvidia card registers) but nothing for the acpi video brightness value.

I've also found that I can adjust the screen brightness by using the nvidia commandline interface:

 $ nvidia-settings --assign RedBrightness=x --assign GreenBrightness=x --assign BlueBrightness=x

where x is a value between -1 and 1.

So where now - there is no bug?

I've looked at smartdimmer and nvclock.  These packages don't work for all nvidia cards and seem to be risky to use.  Especially when there is a nvidia-settings package available which can already do this.

So I think that acpi should be linked to nvidia-settings somehow (I suppose this should be the responsibility of nvidia).  Would a acpi-nvidia package work (where acpi and nvidia-settings are prerequistes and also an active nvidia kernel/xserver) that matches acpi video and xserver screens and sychronises registry settings?

Cheers
Pete

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