ASUS GL553VW Backlit Keyboard

[bfd1106]

As the title says. Backlit keys do not work. Mint18 Cinnamon. Running acpi_listen in terminal and using func f3 and f4 returns nothing. Mute Volume up and Down do work. Any help would be appreciated

[bfd1106]

contents of /sys/class/leds is

input4::capslock input9::capslock input9::numlock
input4::numlock input9::compose input9::scrolllock
input4::scrolllock input9::kana phy0-led

[JerryF]

Maybe try a more recent kernel.

[bfd1106]

Maybe try a more recent kernel.

Does this require doing something manually? System is fully up to date using update manager

[bfd1106]

Installing 4.10 now. Let you know how it goes

[bfd1106]

Updating to latest kernel did not change anything

[JerryF]

Just thought that maybe a more recent kernel would support your keyboard. Unfortunately, I don't have another suggestion.

[bfd1106]

Interesting tidbit..boot into windows 10....keys light. If I do a simple restart instead of a power down I can keep keys lit in Mint also. However I lose my sound while I have a backlit keyboard......hmmmmmm

[haleakalas]

On most systems (laptops or stand alone keyboards) the keyboard backlight function is handled locally. So a key combination allows you to turn it on and off without getting that information sent to the BIOS/OS level.
It is also often possible to turn it on and off in slave mode, meaning that the bios knows how to turn the lights on and off but the keyboard key actions are not carried to the bios, acpi or os kernel to inform "it" that the user wants to turn the lights on or off.
This issue has to do with the fact that there is no standardization for keyboard backlight management.
It would be possible to use a softkey combination to implement a better solution (which was done by some laptop manufacturers and ended up with two backlight keys, one "hard" and a different one "soft") but in the absence of standards most don't.
Hal

[beowulf]

Hi I have a similar issue on my asus gl752

Only F8, F10, F11 and F12 working
But only F10 F11 and F12 has detected by acpi_listen:
~ $ acpi_listen
button/mute MUTE 00000080 00000000 K
button/volumedown VOLDN 00000080 00000000 K
button/volumeup VOLUP 00000080 00000000 K


Do not know the details about who blocks the other button requests!

But I have a workaround.

Found somewhere this shell script called 'kbd_backlight'

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash

path="/sys/class/leds/asus::kbd_backlight"
#path="/sys/class/leds/asus\:\:kbd_backlight"

# max should be 3
max=$(cat ${path}/max_brightness)
# step: represent the difference between previous and next brightness
step=1
previous=$(cat ${path}/brightness)

function commit {
	if [[ $1 = [0-9]* ]]
	then 
		if [[ $1 -gt $max ]]
		then 
			next=$max
		elif [[ $1 -lt 0 ]]
		then 
			next=0
		else 
			next=$1
		fi
		echo $next >> ${path}/brightness
		exit 0
	else 
		exit 1
	fi
}

case "$1" in
 up)
     commit $(($previous + $step))
  ;;
 down)
     commit $(($previous - $step))
  ;;
 max)
	 commit $max
  ;;
 on)
	 $0 max
  ;;
 off)
	 commit 0
  ;;
 show)
	 echo $previous
  ;;
 night)
	 commit 1 
	 ;;
 allowusers)
	 # Allow members of users group to change brightness
	 sudo chgrp users ${path}/brightness
	 sudo chmod g+w ${path}/brightness
  ;;
 disallowusers)
	 # Allow members of users group to change brightness
	 sudo chgrp root ${path}/brightness
	 sudo chmod g-w ${path}/brightness
  ;;
 *)
	 commit	$1
esac

exit 0

This is located in folder /usr/local/share/

From a terminal next command turns on the backlight for me:
sudo /usr/local/share/kbd_backlight up

next one is turning off:
sudo /usr/local/share/kbd_backlight down

I have 4 levels 0 1 2 3. Turned off and 3 different brighness.

There is an option of this script to enable this change for users:
sudo /usr/local/share/kbd_backlight allowusers

After this the next command is working too:
/usr/local/share/kbd_backlight down

After this I have created a separate script called 'kbd_backlight_allow' with this single line:
sudo /usr/local/share/kbd_backlight allowusers

Into the same folder /usr/local/share/

I have set permissions on both of these scripts to:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1038 dec 8 16:38 kbd_backlight
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 47 dec 20 12:24 kbd_backlight_allow


In Session Startup setting added a new Appplication Autostart item
This item launched the kbd_backlight_allow script.

The last step was to create two new keyboard shortcuts for F3 and F4 in Keyboard Settings.
Opened Keyboard Settings, Added two new Application Shortcuts.

One for Super+F3:
/usr/local/share/kbd_backlight down

the other for Super+F4:
/usr/local/share/kbd_backlight up

So after next log-in this key combination worked for me OK not Fn+F3 and F4 but Super+F3 and Super+F4 small difference, but can turn on and off the backlight.

The state of backlight is reserved when turned off the machine.

I hope this helps for you too.

Have a great weekend!

[beowulf]

Did a test run on Ubuntu 1804 beta.
Fn+F3
Fn+F4
working fine!!!!
Tested Screen brightnes Fn+F5, Fn+F6 working too!
I hope this will be in next Mint version too!

[tombTwiz]

As the title says. Backlit keys do not work. Mint18 Cinnamon. Running acpi_listen in terminal and using func f3 and f4 returns nothing. Mute Volume up and Down do work. Any help would be appreciated

How did you get this working? And with Which Asus Laptop? I have a GL553vw with Ubuntu 18.04 (updated from 17.10 to 18.04).
My keys (F3 F4 F5 F6) are still not working.

[beowulf]

Hi tombTwiz,

Using G752VL.
Using Mint 18.3 xfce with latest kernel and Fn+F3/F4 is working OOTB. For screen brightness I have installed the script attached in the previous comment above...
Testing Mint Tara now and Fn+F3/F4 and Fn+F5/F6 is working fine with latest kernel 4.15.0-23-generic x86_64.