Is it remotely possible the Infinity 24hr.-by-hr. animation wallpapers are the source of your consternation here: * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/F8Themes/Infinity/Round3Final#head-0afce1582af5a054f81558f0e4148b3b6a445bbd

Sam Varshavchik <mrsam@courier-mta.com> wrote: Rick Stevens writes:

> On Thu, 2007-12-13 at 19:41 -0500, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
>> Frank Cox writes:
>>
>> > On Wed, 12 Dec 2007 19:57:55 -0500
>> > Sam Varshavchik wrote:
>> >
>> >> My laptop seemingly has an ambient light sensor, of some kind, and the
>> >> kernel apparently
knows about it, but won't let me access it.
>> >
>> > Are you sure it's kernel-controlled? Perhaps it's 100% hardware.
>> >
>> > Try covering that sensor when you're looking at Grub and see if it brightens
>> > or dims the screen then.
>>
>> Tried that. No response in Grub, the LCD backlight begins reacting to the
>> ambient light sensor as soon as the kernel boots, even before initscripts
>> mount all the filesystems.
>
> Can you disable it in the BIOS?

There are no BIOS settings, and it only begins working after the Linux
kernel gets loaded. As I said: the sensor is not active when Grub's menu is
shown, only after the kernel is loaded.

This is but a minor irritation, but I want to track it down just for the
sheer mystery factor: here I have this hardware device that all evidence
suggests is directly supported by the kernel. It
does not get activated
until the kernel boots, so it cannot be purely a BIOS-controlled function.
It is not control by X.org, or Gnome, because I can get the light sensor to
react even before initscripts mount their partition. Direct support in the
kernel is the only choice left.

Yet, I find no apparent kernel module, and I find nothing in /proc or /sys
that gives any hint of this sensor's existence. The only thing I can think
of is that this is an ACPI function, but my knowledge of ACPI is rather
scant.

This is an irritant because my normal light levels in the room happen to
just hit that sweet spot where the ambient light sensor starts dimming the
LCD backlight just slightly. The dim function is not absolute, it is
gradual. The sensor can dim the backlight in small steps, between full and
less-than-half regular brightness level.

So, with the ambient room light level right at the top of the sensor's

threshold, for the longest time I thought that my eyes were playing tricks
on me, because I could've sworn that the brightness of the laptop's display
kept flickering back and forth.

Only some time later did I discover of the sensor's existence (because
nothing in Gnome, or /var/log/message gave any hint of its presence), and
figured out that the stupid thing was frobbing the LCD backlight's power a
few notches back and forth, with the ambient light level right at the top of
the sensor's threshold. It was driving me nuts, until I figured this out.
Now, I just want to turn the blasted thing off, and leave the LCD backlight
at full power, all the time.

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Paul Shaffer writes:

Is it remotely possible the Infinity 24hr.-by-hr. animation wallpapers are
the source of your consternation here:
*
<URL:http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/F8Themes/Infinity/Round3Final#he
ad-0afce1582af5a054f81558f0e4148b3b6a445bbd>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/A
rtwork/F8Themes/Infinity/Round3Final#head-0afce1582af5a054f81558f0e4148b3b6
a445bbd


I appreciate your intent to help, but unless these so-called animation
wallpapers have gained the ability to detect my thumb being placed over the
light sensor, and respond accordingly at any time of the day, whenever I
wish, this ain't it.


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Sam Varshavchik wrote:

Tomasz Torcz writes:


Dnia 13-12-2007, czw o godzinie 07:12 -0500, Sam Varshavchik pisze:

> /apps/gnome-panel-manager/ambient

The only applet I see is the "Brightness" applet, I don't have any
"Ambient" applet. Is that in a separate package? yum shows nothing
Grepping through the various kernel modules, the only culprit I can find
is a "tsl2550.ko' -- a "TSL2550 ambient light sensor driver", but I
don't have this module loaded at all


Strange mystery.
Perhaps it is a direct hardware controlled function that only operates
once the cpu is running in protected mode {ring 3}, or acpi/dmi function
that operates once the kernel loads drivers for such.


If the second is the case you could try kernel parameters to disable
acpi (for a giggle).


There might be direct control available from the /proc file system ?

By the way, what manu/model is it ?

DaveT.

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David Timms writes:


Sam Varshavchik wrote:

Tomasz Torcz writes:


Dnia 13-12-2007, czw o godzinie 07:12 -0500, Sam Varshavchik pisze:

> /apps/gnome-panel-manager/ambient

The only applet I see is the "Brightness" applet, I don't have any
"Ambient" applet. Is that in a separate package? yum shows nothing
Grepping through the various kernel modules, the only culprit I can find
is a "tsl2550.ko' -- a "TSL2550 ambient light sensor driver", but I
don't have this module loaded at all


Strange mystery.
Perhaps it is a direct hardware controlled function that only operates
once the cpu is running in protected mode {ring 3}, or acpi/dmi function
that operates once the kernel loads drivers for such.


If the second is the case you could try kernel parameters to disable
acpi (for a giggle).


What a laugh, indeed. Turning off ACPI did disable this pesky ambient light
sensor.


… and made the LCD backlight come up at about the 70% brightness level.
Unfortunately, I need to keep my eyes in working order, for the foreseeable
future, so I need 100% brightness.


And, of course, since ACPI is disabled, gnome-power-management no longer had
knobs to adjust the brightness level.


Hardy, har har, indeed.


There might be direct control available from the /proc file system ?


I find nothing obvious in /proc/acpi, aside from someone's idea of a
practical joke that I already bugzillaed a month or so, ago:


$ ls -al /proc/acpi/video
total 0
dr-xr-xr-x 4 root root 0 2007-12-14 19:42 .
dr-xr-xr-x 11 root root 0 2007-12-14 19:38 ..
dr-xr-xr-x 5 root root 0 2007-12-14 19:44 VGA
dr-xr-xr-x 5 root root 0 2007-12-14 19:44 VGA

Yes, I have two /proc/acpi/video/VGA directories.


By the way, what manu/model is it ?


Whitebox laptop. dmidecode sez:

Handle 0x0001, DMI type 1, 25 bytes.
System Information
Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
Product Name: M7V
Version: 1.0
Serial Number: SSN12345678901234567

UUID: 28CE5D8A-0000-0080-385D-0017312C16F2
Wake-up Type: Power Switch

Love that serial number.

There's nothing in dmidecode's output that references anything that might
shed some light on this.



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