Linux and Vaio Fn Keys and ACPI

Well I am running Ubuntu 8.10 on my TT (VGN-TT15GN) at the moment but like so many others I am having issues with the brightness (although I am led to believe this has been sorted in 9.04 release - just not a fan of beta's as my main OS)

There is a LOT of information about Fn keys on Vaio's and *nix - specifically Ubuntu and the Z series Vaio's, but there is not, well, anything about the TT and was wondering if anyone else out there had perhaps a site suggestion (I have read a lot of different sites these last few days ) that could help me with my quest to get the eject and S1 buttons working as well as my Fn keys on the TT??

I have the kernel modules loaded, running, played with, recompiled etc etc to no avail, tried things like kmilo, patches for different Vaio's, again with no luck. I can code in C++ but am stuck somewhat when it comes to creating kernel modules for hardware so any tips and help would be most appreciated

(Yes I am a regular on the Ubuntu forums as well as IRC....so already asking there - but the internets is such a hooooge place someone might have something out there )

 

There seems to be some net consensus that using the newer sony-laptop kernel module, available since 2.6.23, should map the LCD brightness keys correctly. ( sonypi is on its way to being deprecated so you should just use sony-laptop going forward) At least this Archlinux user howto reports that it's that simple. But you're right in that this howto is for a VGN-B3VP, and not your VGN-TT15GN. My first suggestion would be to go back to stock 8.10 with no kernel mods, make sure you're only loading sony-laptop as a module, and see if you get your FN key mapping correctly. (Apologies if you've done that already) Make sure you read the section titled, Fn keys (hotkeys), from the sony-laptop module developer's wiki, to see if the suggestion on editing your xorg.conf helps in your situation.

My next suggestion would be to consider upgrading to the latest Ubuntu release you're comfortable with, (like a beta candidate), since that seems to be the easiest way to upgrade a kernel in Ubuntu, (apologies if this is an incorrect statement, I'm a Gentoo user). With these kinds of distros, upgrading the release usually gets you an upgraded kernel, which gets you the latest sony-laptop module with it. You also get the most recent hal which, if I understand correctly in the VAIO FN world, is used to forward Fn key events as ACPI events. (I understand your reluctance to not want to run beta releases of your distro, although it's probably more stable than a beta release of a standalone software program.) The other benefit to you in upgrading your distro release, is because your VGN-TT15GN is pretty new, and could benefit from other updates rolled into a newer Ubuntu release, not only for FN key mapping, but also for WiFi, GPU, and other updated hardware support.

If you prefer to stay with the 8.10, as an alternative you could contact these folks, who sell pre-configured Linux systems, which includes a VAIO TT model, for which they claim to have done all of the hard work to configure the hardware under their emperor Linux, (looks like an Ubuntu derivative). I understand that they are in the business of selling systems and may prefer to provide help to only their direct customers, but it may be worthwhile to ping the support email alias, to simply ask them the specific question of how did they get the VGN-TT FN keys to correctly set LCD brightness under Linux.

Good Luck..

 

Oh thankyou SOOOOOO much jas

A couple of things there for me to investigate when I get home this afternoon.

As for updating to 9.04 - well since the release is only 10 days away now I might just wait until then - I did try the beta prior to reinstalling 8.10 and as stated am impressed with the brightness control now available - however I think there needs to be some key mapping to get it to work using the Fn keys as well.

I think the issue is there are not that many people using the Vaio TT for linux at the moment - but I will be contacting Emperor Linux about their TT setups.... (actually going to have a play with their emperorkernel tonight as you can download it from the site)

Thanks again jas - hopefully if I can get the keys mapped I might be able to get a script together to do it automagically before there is proper kernel based support..we shall see....