Bug 178774

Summary:	Dell Mini 9 Backlight Flicker
Product:	[Frameworks and Libraries] solid	Reporter:	Manuel <manuel>
Component:	powermanagement-daemon	Assignee:	Dario Freddi <drf>
Status:	RESOLVED WORKSFORME
Severity:	normal	CC:	finex
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	openSUSE
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:

Description Manuel 2008-12-26 03:36:39 UTC

Version:            (using KDE 4.1.3)
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    SuSE RPMs

I noticed a strange behaviour on my new Dell Mini 9 Netbook. With the xorg-intel Driver (gma945) the display-brightness  flickers randomly every few seconds within KDE4 (opensuse 11.1). I backchecked with the vesa driver - nothing, I tried with XFCE and KDE3 and it was ok, so I think it's a bug in powerdevil that causes the errors with the intel-driver.

Comment 1 Dario Freddi 2008-12-30 12:43:27 UTC

It could be, though, to verify this, please post the output of kded4 when flickering happens

Comment 2 Manuel 2008-12-31 12:16:21 UTC

How do I get the output? I thought kded runs in background while KDE is running? Any debug options?

Happy new year

Comment 3 Dario Freddi 2009-01-11 23:00:53 UTC

You can kill kded4 and then start it again. The output will be flushed to your current console then.

Comment 4 Manuel 2009-01-11 23:24:24 UTC

Thanks for the general hint, but two things solved the thing for me:

As noticed  in the driver bugreport 
-> http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19237

I changed the backlight control from "kernel" to "native" with
  $ xrandr --output LVDS --set BACKLIGHT_CONTROL native
in .xinitrc
That worked first, but it was deprecrated with the update to the newer
DELL MINI 9 Bios Version A004.
I close this bug now and hope it does not happen again, but after 3 days I did not notice any trouble in that direction.

Comment 5 Dario Freddi 2009-01-11 23:35:12 UTC

Thanks, please share this with other users who have your notebook :)