Bug 67681

Summary: Asus G75VW F keys Not Working For WiFi & Brightness
Product: Drivers Reporter: KernelBug (77777)
Component: Video(DRI - non Intel)Assignee: drivers_video-dri
Status: ASSIGNED ---    
Severity: high CC: aaron.lu, alan, tianyu.lan
Priority: P1    
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Kernel Version: 3.14.27 Subsystem:
Regression: No Bisected commit-id:
Attachments: acpidump
lspci
dmesg
Xorg.0.log

Description KernelBug 2013-12-25 10:32:22 UTC
I have an Asus G75VW and I've noticed on several distros I've tested out that the F2 for Wifi and the F5 & F6 for the screen brightness do not work.

It's my understanding a driver is being used for the F5 & F6 keys in Windows to control the screen brightness which might be possible to be controlled by the kernel at the ACPI level.

Besides trying differnet distros I've tried several kernel versions and I've also tried every solution possible to make this work, and came up empty.

Since this does not work on any distro or by any methods manually, I'm not sure how to report with what information you might need.

The last two distros I've tried are Ubuntu 12.04 x64 and my regular distro I run is Slackware 14.0 x64 with kernel 3.12.6

I hope that it's possible to get the F2, F5, & F6 keys working in the kernel?

Please let me know what files, logs, etc., you might need for me to submit?

Thank you all very much for your time and help in this matter, it's greatly appreciated.

Happy Holidays to all!
Comment 1 Lan Tianyu 2013-12-26 01:35:12 UTC
Please provide the output of acpidump.
Comment 2 Lan Tianyu 2014-01-07 06:32:55 UTC
ping ...
Comment 3 KernelBug 2014-04-10 02:21:45 UTC
AHHH SORRY I did not get back sooner... :(

I'm adding an attachment for acpidump.

THANK YOU!
Comment 4 KernelBug 2014-04-10 02:22:15 UTC
Created attachment 131841 [details]
acpidump
Comment 5 Aaron Lu 2014-04-10 02:32:04 UTC
Please list /sys/class/backlight, lspci and attach dmesg.
$ ls /sys/class/backlight
... ...

$ lspci
... ...

$ dmesg > dmesg.txt
Comment 6 KernelBug 2014-04-10 03:19:48 UTC
ls /sys/class/backlight
acpi_video0@  acpi_video1@  nvidia_backlight@

nvidia_backlight is from nvidiabl I'm also playing with at the moment;

https://github.com/guillaumezin/nvidiabl

THANKS
Comment 7 KernelBug 2014-04-10 03:20:07 UTC
Created attachment 131851 [details]
lspci
Comment 8 KernelBug 2014-04-10 03:20:23 UTC
Created attachment 131861 [details]
dmesg
Comment 9 KernelBug 2014-04-14 04:50:22 UTC
Have any of the developers looked at nvidiabl at least to add something like this into the kernel for the screen brightness control?

https://github.com/guillaumezin/nvidiabl


thanks
Comment 10 Aaron Lu 2014-04-23 02:01:29 UTC
(In reply to 3fdd1e5d from comment #9)
> Have any of the developers looked at nvidiabl at least to add something like
> this into the kernel for the screen brightness control?
> 
> https://github.com/guillaumezin/nvidiabl

That is of interest to the in kernel nv gpu developers I think.
Comment 11 KernelBug 2014-04-24 05:51:14 UTC
If the developers incorporate this into the kernel I can tell you right from the start that libvdpau and nvidiabl don't play nice together...

https://github.com/guillaumezin/nvidiabl/issues/92

https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/725

Also as far as the kernel and Asus is concerned maybe there is some headway being made already.

In 3.13.x I noticed that I get now;

/sys/class/backlight/asus-nb-wmi

But it does not respond at the command line as;

echo 10 | sudo tee /sys/class/backlight/asus-nb-wmi/brightness

I find this confusing since asus-nb-wmi is appearing in the /sys/class/backlight/
path I'm assuming this is also for the backlight, so then why it's not responding at the command line is what I'd like to know and if it does then maybe this is finally the solution that needs fixing?

If I look in actual_brightness & max_brightness the numbers are 100 and they never change, but the brightness shows the number changed to what I use in the cmd line, it's the only file that changes...

Also if it's of any help xbacklight works on this laptop;

xbacklight -dec 40
xbacklight -inc 40
Comment 12 Aaron Lu 2014-04-25 01:50:34 UTC
(In reply to 3fdd1e5d from comment #11)
> If the developers incorporate this into the kernel I can tell you right from
> the start that libvdpau and nvidiabl don't play nice together...

OK, from comment #9, I thought you want nvidiabl to be incorporated into the kernel...looks like this is not the case, what you want is to incorporate the functionality instead of nvidiabl.

> In 3.13.x I noticed that I get now;
> 
> /sys/class/backlight/asus-nb-wmi
> 
> But it does not respond at the command line as;
> 
> echo 10 | sudo tee /sys/class/backlight/asus-nb-wmi/brightness
> 
> I find this confusing since asus-nb-wmi is appearing in the
> /sys/class/backlight/
> path I'm assuming this is also for the backlight, so then why it's not
> responding at the command line is what I'd like to know and if it does then
> maybe this is finally the solution that needs fixing?

The asus-nb-wmi driver may simply expose this interface if it finds the corresponding control interface exists in the firmware table, it doesn't know that interface doesn't work until user reports a bug.

> Also if it's of any help xbacklight works on this laptop;
> 
> xbacklight -dec 40
> xbacklight -inc 40

Please check your xorg log file to see which backlight interface the X driver is using.
Comment 13 KernelBug 2014-04-25 02:04:12 UTC
Hi Aaron,

I'm flexible on anything the developers want to do here.

Originally this was a report for the F keys on my laptop, I only mentioned nvidiabl as an option in case nothing else works, that's all, and then someone changed the title of the report, so that's ok, but again I don't know what should work at the moment, if the kernel should support this and work?

So anyone's call on this, how they want to deal with it is fine, again I was only throwing ideas out there...

I see in the log some things related to the asus wmi keys if this is where I need to be looking?

I'm also attaching the log...


THANKS Aaron


[    15.956] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    15.956] (II) This device may have been added with another device file.
[    15.956] (II) config/udev: Adding input device Asus WMI hotkeys (/dev/input/event5)
[    15.956] (**) Asus WMI hotkeys: Applying InputClass "evdev keyboard catchall"
[    15.956] (**) Asus WMI hotkeys: Applying InputClass "keyboard-all"
[    15.956] (II) Using input driver 'evdev' for 'Asus WMI hotkeys'
[    15.956] (**) Asus WMI hotkeys: always reports core events
[    15.956] (**) evdev: Asus WMI hotkeys: Device: "/dev/input/event5"
[    15.956] (--) evdev: Asus WMI hotkeys: Vendor 0 Product 0
[    15.956] (--) evdev: Asus WMI hotkeys: Found keys
[    15.956] (II) evdev: Asus WMI hotkeys: Configuring as keyboard
[    15.956] (**) Option "config_info" "udev:/sys/devices/platform/asus-nb-wmi/input/input9/event5"
[    15.956] (II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "Asus WMI hotkeys" (type: KEYBOARD, id 12)
[    15.956] (**) Option "xkb_rules" "evdev"
[    15.956] (**) Option "xkb_model" "pc104"
[    15.956] (**) Option "xkb_layout" "us"
[    15.956] (**) Option "xkb_options" "terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp"
Comment 14 KernelBug 2014-04-25 02:04:37 UTC
Created attachment 133711 [details]
Xorg.0.log
Comment 15 KernelBug 2014-04-25 06:06:57 UTC
ls /sys/class/backlight/ -l

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Apr 24 10:19 asus-nb-wmi -> ../../devices/platform/asus-nb-wmi/backlight/asus-nb-wmi/

cat actual_brightness
100

cat max_brightness
100

Running the cmd below also does nothing; 

echo 10 > /sys/devices/platform/asus-nb-wmi/backlight/asus-nb-wmi/brightness

brightness file is the only one that changes;

cat brightness
10
Comment 16 KernelBug 2014-04-26 04:19:03 UTC
Not sure if this helps, but I noticed this in /var/log/dmesg for kernel 3.13.11;

asus_wmi: Backlight controlled by ACPI video driver
Comment 17 KernelBug 2014-05-11 04:22:55 UTC
I edited the title of the report back to what it was originally...

I want to make this very clear this was never about incorporating into the kernel nvidiabl. 

I just want to get my F keys working for screen brighntness, having the kernel support the Asus G75VW is all.

I hope this issue is still being investigated as to why it's not working when there is the asus wmi module in the kernel, it's my understanding should work.

thank you
Comment 18 KernelBug 2014-05-11 04:25:24 UTC
I'm sorry I did not get back to someone sooner when they replied back in Jan 2014, you know how sometimes bug reports can be, waiting...

Anyhow this bug report is going on 6 months with no fix and I really need this.

Can someone give me a time frame what to expect here on getting this to work with kernel support?

thank you
Comment 19 Alan 2014-05-11 14:33:25 UTC
The kernel bugzilla is just used to track bugs between distributions and groups. It's not a fixing or support service. If you need to get something fixed faster please start with your distribution and/or support provider.
Comment 20 KernelBug 2014-05-12 20:52:55 UTC
Hello Alan,

With no disrespect you to, so please don't take any, I'm a Slackware Geek of almost 15 years, I know what bugzilla is.

But the truth is you do see fixes/patches, end-user support jumping in and creating a solution etc., so I was only talking in general reference to this, when I was asking about this.

Sorry for any confusion when I Was asking about a time frame on this without first making it clear IF this might of been something that was getting attention in the past before I came along.

Now as me being a Geek, hopefully you're Geek enough to know, Pat doesn't fix something like this, it has to come from Upstream and that's the Kernel Hackers...

Remember too Alan, The Kernel Bugzilla isn't 'Written In Blood', what it must be and have no deviation to it at all! Nothing is written in blood around here.

This is however an OpenSource Community, granted, I'll take a stab here which is pretty accurate, the majority of end-users are on Distros that do get the fix from the Distro Team/Developers, but still, regardless, the way I see it, the kernel still needs a module to make this work.

Maybe you are not aware of this, but on most of the newer generation Asus gaming laptops, they are all in this same situation, so this is not just about me, it's about getting better support that will hopefully help their entire gaming line in this same boat.

So I'm here as a end-user doing the best I can to help make things not only better for me, but for everyone, and you are my help and support, there is no one.

So PLEASE, let's remember in Life there is Nothing Written in Blood, everything is flexible, and this situation certainly has room for improvements...

Again I mean no disrespect here, I'm only talking, not trying to be big headed or any of the above, and I really appreciate your time.

Thank you... :)
Comment 21 Alan 2014-05-12 21:28:00 UTC
Sorry - we get a lot of people (mostly running a distro beginning with 'U' who get the idea that this is a magic support body that will run and fix their bug - so  I try and warn people it isn't that at all.
Comment 22 KernelBug 2014-05-13 01:26:02 UTC
Hi Alan,

Thank you so much for not taking anything I said the wrong way, I was worried you'd come back and kill me, LOL...

'U' LOL... :)

Life in Slack is grand except when facing upstream bugs like this, then you're stuck, and I'm not geek enough to handle something like this, I mean trying to make it work on the kernel level.

I can make it work with nvidiabl and xbacklight which I'm using right now with xbindkeys to work for the F5 & F6, the keys don't show up with acpi_listen or xev.

I'm also using new nvidia drivers 331.67 and kernel 3.14.3 now, if anyone needs any other logs beacause of some new updates I'm running please let me know...

Trust me I've spent, days, weeks and months, and countless hours, every which way I or any other Linux geek can imagine...

cheers

P.S. The Status says NEEDINFO, I gave everything that was asked?
Comment 23 Aaron Lu 2014-05-13 01:31:19 UTC
I think the first problem is to find a working backlight interface. From your comment #6, the only working interface is nvidiabl, which is an out of tree kernel module. So the first thing to do is to add it into the kernel or enhance current kernel to support backlight control for nvidia cards. Is this correct?
Comment 24 KernelBug 2014-05-14 01:20:49 UTC
nvidiabl is the only thing I've found on a kernel module level that seems to be working.

Unless someone has had a look at the xorg log and sees it showing a source it should be trying to use?

Also I thought asus wmi that is in the kernel is where the support is suppose to be coming from?
Comment 25 Aaron Lu 2014-05-14 02:18:59 UTC
(In reply to 3fdd1e5d from comment #24)
> Also I thought asus wmi that is in the kernel is where the support is
> suppose to be coming from?

If I had to guess, I would think it should be the nvidia gpu driver to support it, that's why I've moved the bug to driver/gpu. Looks like no nvidia gpu driver developer is looking here, so I would suggest you to ask for help through mailing list.
Comment 26 KernelBug 2014-05-14 06:45:08 UTC
Well not according to what I'm reading and understanding here, this is suppose to be I thought from asus wmi?

CONFIG_ASUS_NB_WMI:

This is a driver for newer Asus notebooks. It adds extra features
like wireless radio and bluetooth control, leds, hotkeys, backlight...

So what is this backlight that is being mentioned with CONFIG_ASUS_NB_WMI?

thanks
Comment 27 KernelBug 2014-05-14 06:48:30 UTC
I thought I mentioned this before, but Nvidia uses a driver for Windows to control this, it doesn't come from Nvidia. 

You can actually see that the F keys have an Asus ROG logo themed popup display instead of the standard windows looking display.

So I REPEAT, this is not controlled by Nvidia... :)


thanks
Comment 28 KernelBug 2014-05-14 06:49:20 UTC
Errrr TYPO before;

I thought I mentioned this before, but "ASUS" uses a driver for windows...
Comment 29 KernelBug 2014-06-02 04:19:20 UTC
Since this has been handed over to the Drivers, has anyone seen this?

Thanks
Comment 30 KernelBug 2014-06-30 00:56:04 UTC
Are the developers certain this is not a kernel related issue, a lack of support?

I was told that the asus-laptop.ko module should be loaded, but it won't load on my laptop. When I try to modprobe it, I get;

modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'asus_laptop': No such device

For the kernel bootline I've added, which I've been told should help to load the module, but it's not;

acpi_backlight=vendor acpi_osi=Linux


thanks
Comment 31 KernelBug 2014-08-11 02:03:16 UTC
I wonder if any of the developers are aware that there is not one distro this works on? Meaning there isn't the support for it in Linux, which I was hoping was going to come from the kernel support.

I'm now using 3.16 and this still does not work... :(

From the command line nothing works, the below command does not work.

echo 10 > /sys/class/backlight/asus-nb-wmi/brightness
Comment 32 KernelBug 2014-12-05 03:10:40 UTC
Hi,

Has there been any progress on this?

As I mentioned in the past I use xbindkeys in my $HOME a file called, .xbindkeysrc and these are the command I use below;



##################################
# End of xbindkeys configuration #
##################################

# My keybindings

#decrease brightness
"~/.config/openbox/backlight-dn.sh"
    m:0x0 + c:71
     F5

#increase brightness
"~/.config/openbox/backlight-up.sh"
     m:0x0 + c:72
     F6

Which simply run;

xbacklight -inc 10
xbacklight -dec 10

Seeing that xbacklight works in this situation, does that help shed light on comiing up with a solution?

thank you...
Comment 33 KernelBug 2015-01-08 09:26:52 UTC
HELLO,

This was not correct switching this to Video Drivers.

Someone FORGOT to SEE that I was also talking about the F2 key not working as well for the WiFi...

I've been at this for over a year, can I please get some input on this please?

THANKS
Comment 34 KernelBug 2015-01-08 09:29:17 UTC
I made the mistake too of getting caught up in just trying to work out resolving the video instead of also trying to figure out why the F2 doesn't work to turn the wifi on and off...

I'd really appreciate if someone can PLEASE reply and let me know if there's anything the Kernel team can do to get some support for this model so these keys will finally work?

THANK YOU :)
Comment 35 KernelBug 2015-01-08 09:32:24 UTC
lspci shows;

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v2/3rd Gen Core processor PCI Express Root Port (rev 09)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI Host Controller (rev 04)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev c4)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev c4)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev c4)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation HM77 Express Chipset LPC Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 04)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK107M [GeForce GTX 660M] (rev a1)
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GK107 HDMI Audio Controller (rev a1)
03:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9485 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR8151 v2.0 Gigabit Ethernet (rev c0)


rfkill list all

0: phy0: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: no
1: asus-wlan: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: no
2: asus-bluetooth: Bluetooth
	Soft blocked: yes
	Hard blocked: no



when running acpi_listen and pressing the F2 or FN combination I get no reply back...
Comment 36 KernelBug 2015-01-08 09:45:32 UTC
lspci -nnk | grep -A2 0280

03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9485 Wireless Network Adapter [168c:0032] (rev 01)
	Subsystem: AzureWave Device [1a3b:2c97]
	Kernel driver in use: ath9k
Comment 37 KernelBug 2015-01-08 09:47:25 UTC
lsmod | grep -e ath9k -e asus

lsmod | grep -e ath9k -e asus                                                                                                               < slack:pts/0:~
asus_nb_wmi             7360  0 
asus_wmi               15637  1 asus_nb_wmi
hwmon                   2833  2 coretemp,asus_wmi
sparse_keymap           3074  1 asus_wmi
ath9k                  87916  0 
ath9k_common            1834  1 ath9k
ath9k_hw              386080  2 ath9k_common,ath9k
ath                    19115  3 ath9k_common,ath9k,ath9k_hw
mac80211              480208  1 ath9k
cfg80211              421179  3 ath,ath9k,mac80211
rfkill                 15443  3 cfg80211,bluetooth,asus_wmi
wmi                     8211  1 asus_wmi
Comment 38 Alan 2015-01-08 11:48:38 UTC
Putting back under Nvidia video.

Please file a separate bug for the Wifi, but mention this one.

That way the wifi authors will see that part of it.

Note that this not "support" or a support forum. Support would be via your distribution.
Comment 39 KernelBug 2015-01-09 06:06:50 UTC
Hi Alan,

Ok about going back under Video, in the meantime I did open another report, pointing to this really;

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=90971

Yes I know this is not a forum for support, I'm a Geek, and I've got my bandaids on it already making all this work.

The truth is the support isn't in the kernell that is needed, that's all there seems to be this, so I'm ONLY asking and making posts wondering if we're ever going to get kernel support for this...

THANKS
Comment 40 KernelBug 2015-05-06 07:45:14 UTC
I just noticed in the kernel under;

Graphics support > Frame buffer Devices > CONFIG_FB_NVIDIA_BACKLIGHT:

This is the description;

Say Y here if you want to control the backlight of your display.

If this is what I'm looking at and reading, for the backlight of the monitor to control the brightness, WHY is this under the Frame Buffer section, and not placed under, 'Backlight & LCD device support'?

I'm really confused by this and just don't understand...

Can someone PLEASE explain this?

Because I have been waiting since Dec. 2013, hoping that the Kernel Dev team will add in more backlight support, only to find under the Framebuffer, which trying to make Nvidia Framebuffer work is a pain in the ass...
Comment 41 KernelBug 2016-04-12 01:48:32 UTC
Can someone PLEASE be kind enough to tell me if the kernel now has the support for these functions for this laptop?

thank you