Dell E6500 fn+f8 switch video mode does not work (keycodes scancodes keymaps)

[=JeffH]

Hi,

I have a Dell E6500 (with nvidia Quadro NVS 160M GPU) with (k)ubuntu 10.04 
installed (and up-to-date), and upon which I've installed the proprietary 
nvidia driver (which seems to work fine (and sleep works)).

Out-of-the-box most everything seems to work (sound & sound buttons, 
dim/brighten display, sleep button (fn+f1)), however, the display video switch 
fn+f8 does not work.

I've groveled through the ubuntu forums and web at large and see that other 
people have noted this but don't (yet) see a documented fix.

fwiw, I also have a Dell D820 upon which I've run (k)ubuntu since ubuntu 6.10, 
and it's fn+f8 sleep button has always worked, and upon which I also am running 
ubuntu 10.04.


So, I've done some poking about on both the D820 and the E6500 trying to figure 
out what is going on and what changed between the two systems that might be 
causing this.

AFAICT, at least part of the issue is that they keyboard scan codes emitted by 
the E6500 keyboard are different (for at least some of the keys, fn+f8 in 
particular) than they are on the D820. It appears that the ACPI sleep 
initiation is not properly mapped to the  scancodes emitted by the E6500 keyboard.

For example, if a command shell is the active task (i.e. the insertion point is 
sitting at a command prompt), and one presses fn+f8, a character "p" is placed 
at the command prompt, as if one had typed "p".

Using acpi_listen to investigate...

 > sudo acpi_listen -c 1
p
^C

The above command should have exited on it's own after receiving an acpi event 
for fn+f8, but instead just a letter "p" was echoed and then I cntl-C'd out of 
it. For comparison, if I use acpi_listen again and press fn+upArrow (LCD 
brighten)...

 > sudo acpi_listen -c 1
video LCD 00000086 00000000
 >

..the event is received, displayed, and acpi_listen properly exits.

So it seems the that an ACPI event isn't even being generated for fn+f8 on the 
E6500. Further poking about shows that the /lib/udev/keymaps/dell file is the 
same on both the D820 and the E6500 (should it be? (I'm doubting it)), and also 
that some of the various outputs of "dumpkeys" are the same on both systems.

However, using "showkey" on both systems gives markedly different results, 
which are shown below.

Does anyone know what might be going on and what I can do to get fn+f8 to 
properly switch video display on the E6500 ?

thanks,

=JeffH
------


On the D820:
------------

 > sudo showkey -s         # I pressed and released fn-f8 once
kb mode was RAW
[ if you are trying this under X, it might not work
since the X server is also reading /dev/console ]

press any key (program terminates 10s after last keypress)...
0xe0 0x56 0xe0 0xd6 0xe0 0x56 0xe0 0xd6
0xe0 0x56 0xe0 0xd6

 > sudo showkey           # pressed and released fn-f8 once, after releasing 
enter key
kb mode was RAW
[ if you are trying this under X, it might not work
since the X server is also reading /dev/console ]

press any key (program terminates 10s after last keypress)...
keycode  28 release    # Enter key release
keycode 227 press      # pressed fn and nothing showed up here
                        #  until I also pressed fn8
keycode 227 release    # while fn was still pressed,
                        # quickly released and got all three "press-release"
keycode 227 press      # pairs listed here
keycode 227 release
keycode 227 press
keycode 227 release




On the E6500:
-------------

 > sudo showkey -s         # I pressed and released fn-f8 once
kb mode was RAW
[ if you are trying this under X, it might not work
since the X server is also reading /dev/console ]

press any key (program terminates 10s after last keypress)...
0x9c
p0xe0 0x5b 0x19 0x99      # Note the "p" char
0xe0 0xdb


 > sudo showkey
kb mode was RAW
[ if you are trying this under X, it might not work
since the X server is also reading /dev/console ]

press any key (program terminates 10s after last keypress)...
keycode  28 release  # Enter key release (?)   scancode 0x9c ?
pkeycode 125 press   # fn ?  scancodes 0xe0 0x5b ?
keycode  25 press    # f8 ?  scancode 0x19 ?
keycode  25 release  # f8 ?  scancode 0x99 ?
keycode 125 release  # fn release ?  scancodes 0xe0 0xdb ?


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