[Hampshire] Netbook LCD brightness

Top Page

Reply to this message
Author: Tony Wood
Date:  
To: Hampshire
Subject: [Hampshire] Netbook LCD brightness

Dear Friends
I installed Ubuntu Netbook 10.10 in a partition alongside the provided 
Windoze 7 in my new-last-week Samsung N145.
It's a lot easier to get into the system on my PC running Ubuntu 10.10.
As a relative newcomer to Linux I've been working at learning to use 
Terminal and thought that was coming along nicely until I came upon my 
current problem: I can't get the display to un-dim.
In Windoze mode the 'Fn' and 'up' or 'down' buttons control brightness 
OK, but using these in Linux brings up an on-screen flickering slider 
which doesn't work and necessitates an escape routine with the on-off 
switch.
I got into 'Power Management Preferences' and the sliders there don't 
work - the screen stays in power-saving rather-dim mode.
Clicked on 'Help' and there is lots of apparently useful stuff there and 
a 'pinned post-it' :  "Some sliders or option boxes may be disabled if 
the GConf policy keys are not writable. This allows administrators to 
lock down the actions that a user can select."
So I tried Terminal but can't find a way into   GConf    or    
/app/gnome-power-manager/backlight/idle_brightness
When I first installed Linux on the machine, I am sure the brightness 
was fine but I don't know what I did that changed it.


Any ideas on how I could control the display backlight please?

Tony Wood