acer aspire 5734z-4836

[niraj]

hi everyone,
i recently purchased acer laptop, windows 7 was working well, but i wanted to install linux mint 11. I was not able to, since the screen goes blank. I mean i can hear the login sound and can see the desktop, but it is very very dark. So i tried linux mint 10, and the install went smoothly, everything is working perfect. Ubuntu 11.10 is also not working on this computer. where is the problem ? and how can it be corrected. I am not a geek, so is there a way that i can install mint 11 or 12 in near future.
thanks

[xenopeek]

If the screen is not actually blank, but you can see the desktop on it but it is just very dim (dark), this sounds like you need to increase the brightness of the display. Usually you can do this with the Fn key + one of the numbered F keys at the top row of your keyboard.

[niraj]

thanks, but that didnt work. someone had mentioned about it in ubuntu forums. they said that the problem was with the kernel. the solution they mentioned is very complex for someone like me. i'll post the link if i come across it again.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1743301

[xenopeek]

Well, assuming the post on Ubuntu Forums is the solution for you, below is it step-by-step so you should be able to do these actions. This is for Gnome, please share if you are using another desktop as you need slightly different commands to edit the files then.

Step 1) First boot
Hold shift during boot to show the GRUB boot menu, if that isn't already shown by default. Press 'e' to edit the boot parameters, and then scroll down to the line that starts with "linux". On this line, replace the "quiet splash" with "acpi_osi=Linux" (without the quotes) and continue to boot. Once at the login screen, you should now be able to use the brightness keys on your keyboard to increase the backlight.

Alternative: if for some reason the above doesn't get you to be able to increase the brightness, instead of adding "acpi_osi=Linux" to the boot parameters, try "acpi_osi=Linux i915.broken=1" (without the quotes).

Step 2) Make boot parameters permanent
If you were able to boot and increase the brightness, the additional boot parameters you used need to be made permanent. To do this, open a terminal (from the Menu > Terminal) and run the following command:

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gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub

You will be asked by a pop-up dialog to enter your password, do so to continue. Now find the line that starts with GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= and add the boot parameters you needed to it. So assuming "acpi_osi=Linux" was only needed, and the line reads:

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GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

Change it to read:

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GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_osi=Linux"

Done. Save & close the file, then run the following command to commit these changes:

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sudo update-grub2

You will probably be asked for your password again; note that the cursor doesn't move and no characters appear on the screen while you type. Just type your password and press enter to continue.

Step 3) Automatically set the brightness
After step 2, reboot once to see that it works. If you still need to use the brightness key to increase the brightness, because the screen is still dim, proceed with this step. If however the brightness is fine after the reboot, skip this step 3 and you are done.

Open a terminal and run the command:

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gksudo gedit /etc/rc.local

Scroll down to the end of the file, and before the last line that reads "exit 0" insert the following line:

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setpci -s 00:02.0 F4.B=00

Save & close the file. On next reboot this should set the brightness to maximum automatically.

[niraj]

THANKS, that worked. awesome. I had to do step 3 as well to make it bright automatically.
Problem 2 - does not resume brightness on log out and log in. on closing the lid, system gets suspend and then on opening it again, its dark so i have to use the brightness key to get the screen back.
Any solutions for that ??
Thanks again buddy !!

[Qaz]

My problem was that the screen brightness would always be set to minimum at startup. (I run Mint 12 on an Acer Aspire 7730G.) I found the solution to that problem here:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/79983/sc ... ery-reboot

In short: I changed the end of /etc/rc.local (in a terminal type

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gksudo gedit /etc/rc.local

) to this:

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# set screen brightness
#     for the maximum level on your system see:
#     cat /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/max_brightness
echo 9 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
exit 0