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[SOLVED] Backlight controls are not working - Thinkpad P50

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vlitzer
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[SOLVED] Backlight controls are not working - Thinkpad P50

#1 Post by vlitzer »

I freshly installed Debian stretch rc2 on my thinkpad p50. This computer has hybrid graphics with the Quadro M2000M.
After install, everything works, brightness, radios. Video is using the noveau drivers. Very impressed!

I installed the nvidia drivers (which blacklist noveau) and my system hangs on the next reboot. Disabled the hybrid graphics and set it to the discrete card.
That fixed it, but my desktop boots to max brightness and the brightness keys stopped working.

Added the

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Option         "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1;" to /etc/X11/xorg.conf and /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf
but did not work.

Tried changing the kernel boot parameters to video and vendor and did not work.

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 ls /sys/class/backlight/
returns nothing.

however I am able to change the brightness manually using the command:

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xbacklight -set 20
inxi -F

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System:    Host: zolar-mp Kernel: 4.9.0-2-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: N/A
           Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)
Machine:   Device: laptop System: LENOVO product: 20ENCTO1WW v: ThinkPad P50 serial: ########
           Mobo: LENOVO model: 20ENCTO1WW v: SDK0J40697 WIN serial: #########
           UEFI [Legacy]: LENOVO v: N1EET60W (1.33 ) date: 10/17/2016
Battery    BAT0: charge: 56.1 Wh 99.7% condition: 56.2/90.1 Wh (62%)
CPU:       Quad core Intel Core i7-6820HQ (-HT-MCP-) cache: 8192 KB 
           clock speeds: max: 3600 MHz 1: 799 MHz 2: 799 MHz 3: 1900 MHz 4: 799 MHz 5: 799 MHz 6: 800 MHz
           7: 2048 MHz 8: 800 MHz
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA GM107GLM [Quadro M2000M]
           Display Server: X.org 1.19.2 driver: N/A tty size: 141x24 Advanced Data: N/A for root
Audio:     Card-1 NVIDIA Device 0fbc driver: snd_hda_intel Sound: ALSA v: k4.9.0-2-amd64
           Card-2 Intel Sunrise Point-H HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
Network:   Card-1: Intel Ethernet Connection (2) I219-LM driver: e1000e
           IF: enp0s31f6 state: down mac: 50:7b:9d:cb:bf:cc
           Card-2: Intel Wireless 8260 driver: iwlwifi
           IF: wlp4s0 state: up mac: 44:85:00:65:d0:e7
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 1460.3GB (2.9% used)
           ID-1: /dev/sdb model: SanDisk_SDSSDXPS size: 960.2GB
           ID-2: /dev/sda model: Samsung_SSD_850 size: 500.1GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 28G used: 5.2G (20%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-1
           ID-2: /boot size: 236M used: 66M (30%) fs: ext2 dev: /dev/sda1
           ID-3: /home size: 399G used: 4.8G (2%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-3
           ID-4: swap-1 size: 33.71GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/dm-2
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 29.0C mobo: N/A gpu: 37C
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: 0
Info:      Processes: 235 Uptime: 9 min Memory: 922.2/31636.1MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.5 
help?
Last edited by vlitzer on 2017-04-10 04:41, edited 1 time in total.

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phenest
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Re: Backlight controls are not working - Thinkpad P50

#2 Post by phenest »

vlitzer wrote:however I am able to change the brightness manually using the command:

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xbacklight -set 20
That's not necessarily changing the backlight. It's probably just reducing the brightness of the colours.
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Re: Backlight controls are not working - Thinkpad P50

#3 Post by stevepusser »

Unless you really need to leverage the Nvidia GPU for number-crunching, such as openCL or CUDA, you should be able to use both graphics cards with Bumblebee, and just use the Nvidia for demanding 3D programs. You probably just installed the Nvidia drivers instead of bumblebee-nvidia and set up an xorg.conf file, so that led to a boot issue...a system with both GPUs enabled doesn't expose the Nvidia one to xorg, so that's why the xorg.conf file saying to use the Nvidia card is causing a failure to bring up the GUI.
Check out the Debian wiki for Bumblebee install instructions.

From what I can find on the web, your Intel graphics are sixth-generation Skylake, so aren't going to have very good support at all on stock Debian Jessie without the use of kernels and a graphics stack from jessie-backports, so Stretch was a good alternative.
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vlitzer
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Re: Backlight controls are not working - Thinkpad P50

#4 Post by vlitzer »

Well, sure, having bumblebee working would be ideal.
However I consider that an advanced goal, I want to have a working configuration (with brightness control keys) before even dreaming on having switchable graphics.

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Re: Backlight controls are not working - Thinkpad P50

#5 Post by stevepusser »

I gather that the brightness control was working before you disabled the Intel GPU, so my guess is that it was using that for graphics and not the Nvidia card with nouveau. A hybrid system does not ordinarily expose the discrete card to the system. I would restore the Intel GPU to service, remove any xorg.conf file that has been created in /etc/x11, then reboot and check with "inxi -G" to see what graphics driver is being used,

You can leave the proprietary Nvidia drivers installed, since bumblebee-nvidia will use them when you install it later.
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vlitzer
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Re: Backlight controls are not working - Thinkpad P50

#6 Post by vlitzer »

ah that explains why there was no backlight on my sys/class directory.
Well I did that, and it broke my x11. Deleting the xorg.conf did not help either. Trying to generate the default xorg using Xorg -configure failed as well (complaining that number of screens dont match screen found?). Documentation seems to be very old, but again, maybe those pieces never changed.

I should had saved a copy of the original xorg.conf before messing with nvidia :/
Now even booting up my screen is flicking and cant really do anything in other terminals as well. Will check if booting into single user mode fixes it.
Is there a way to regenerate the default configuration ? Whatever the debian installer did, gave me a working setup, which is more than I have right now.

vlitzer
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Re: Backlight controls are not working - Thinkpad P50

#7 Post by vlitzer »

Well, I had to boot in single user mode, removed all nvidia settings, removed all xorg files, made sure that nouveau was not blacklisted, and after a reboot, I have a working config again (with brightness working) but back at step one: no nvidia drivers.
Is there any documentation that I can read for bumblebee that is either updated or relevant to stretch?
I am guessing that just running the nvidia card and forgetting about bumblebee is not possible?

edit: this is my inxi -G now: I cant tell if its running my nvidia or my intel card

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$_ inxi -G
Graphics:  Card-1: Intel HD Graphics 530
           Card-2: NVIDIA GM107GLM [Quadro M2000M]
           Display Server: X.org 1.19.2 drivers: modesetting,nvidia,fbdev,ati,radeon,vesa,vmware,nouveau,intel,amdgpu
           tty size: 80x24 Advanced Data: N/A for root
edit2, glxgears -info shows that its running the intel card.

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# glxgears -info
Running synchronized to the vertical refresh.  The framerate should be
approximately the same as the monitor refresh rate.
GL_RENDERER   = Mesa DRI Intel(R) HD Graphics 530 (Skylake GT2) 
GL_VERSION    = 3.0 Mesa 13.0.6
GL_VENDOR     = Intel Open Source Technology Center
GL_EXTENSIONS = (...)

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Re: Backlight controls are not working - Thinkpad P50

#8 Post by stevepusser »

Inxi should be run as a standard user, since you can see it could not display the driver info as root. I think Stretch's inxi has trouble detecting if you are using the kernel mode setting driver instead of the xorg Intel one, but you seem to be using Intel. As far as I know, the same procedure for Bumblebee in the wiki should essentially apply to stretch.
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Re: Backlight controls are not working - Thinkpad P50

#9 Post by vlitzer »

stevepusser wrote:Inxi should be run as a standard user, since you can see it could not display the driver info as root. I think Stretch's inxi has trouble detecting if you are using the kernel mode setting driver instead of the xorg Intel one, but you seem to be using Intel. As far as I know, the same procedure for Bumblebee in the wiki should essentially apply to stretch.

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$ inxi -G
Graphics:  Card-1: Intel HD Graphics 530
           Card-2: NVIDIA GM107GLM [Quadro M2000M]
           Display Server: X.Org 1.19.2 drivers: modesetting,nvidia,fbdev,ati,radeon,vesa,vmware,nouveau,intel,amdgpu
           Resolution: 1920x1080@60.02hz
           GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 530 (Skylake GT2) GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 13.0.6
You are right. The debian wiki information regarding bumblebee works perfect on my system and stretch. Followed step by step and had no issues (to the exception of the nouveau problem that seems to be not supported)

---

Well, (Last post on this, I promise), everything is working now.
Here is what I found, so whoever comes with the same problem can have a hint on how they might solve it.

I think I figured out what I did wrong, and thats the fact that I ran nvidia-xconfig which is deprecated and ruined everything. deleting the xorg.conf and rebooting solved the issue.

Bumblebee worked perfectly out of the box, and it seems to be the way to go, launching the apps with optirun.
However, optirun does not work with my hardware and nouveau, I keep getting an error saying

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"Failed to load module "mouse" (module does not exist, 0)"
This error seems to be a blanket error, and a bit of more searching I got this as an answer:
Sorry. nouveau is no longer supported with bumblebee.
( source )
So I reinstalled again the nvidia-driver and rebooted so the blacklist went into place. System booted fine, and optirun this time worked fine with glxgears -info
nvidia-settings did not work, but invoking it with optirun and some extra paremeters (found in the arch bumblebee wiki) worked fine as well.

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$ optirun -b none nvidia-settings -c :8
In any case, problem solved!!, and if I actually followed the warnings to not do the nvidia-xconfig, and treated bumblebee as a must for optimus systems, it would have been way more easy.

I must say, I have been installing debian for many years now, and I am very very impressed on how painless and how well everything works out of the box with stretch, specially considering my new hardware!

thanks stevepusser for your attention and following up with my tries
Last edited by vlitzer on 2017-04-10 04:43, edited 2 times in total.

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