Thread (9 messages) 9 messages, 3 authors, 2015-01-10

Re: [PATCH] Documentation: Add entry for dell-laptop sysfs interface

From: Brian Norris <computersforpeace@gmail.com>
Date: 2014-12-31 05:32:00
Also in: lkml, platform-driver-x86

Hi,

On Wed, Dec 03, 2014 at 06:41:33PM +0100, Gabriele Mazzotta wrote:
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
Add the documentation for the new sysfs interface of dell-laptop
that allows to configure the keyboard illumination on Dell systems.

Signed-off-by: Gabriele Mazzotta <redacted>
Signed-off-by: Pali Rohár <redacted>
---
 .../ABI/testing/sysfs-platform-dell-laptop         | 60 ++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 60 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-platform-dell-laptop
diff --git a/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-platform-dell-laptop b/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-platform-dell-laptop
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7969443
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-platform-dell-laptop
@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
+What:		/sys/class/leds/dell::kbd_backlight/als_setting
+Date:		December 2014
+KernelVersion:	3.19
+Contact:	Gabriele Mazzotta <gabriele.mzt@gmail.com>,
+		Pali Rohár <pali.rohar@gmail.com>
+Description:
+		This file allows to control the automatic keyboard
+		illumination mode on some systems that have an ambient
+		light sensor. Write 1 to this file to enable the auto
+		mode, 0 to disable it.
[...]

This entry appears wrong, or at least incomplete. My system boots with a
default value of 18, and the 'set' implementation accepts any value from
0 to 255.

According to the comments in dell-laptop.c, the value actually means
something different than on/off:

  cbArg3, byte0  Desired setting of ALS value that turns the light on or off.

Admittedly, I'm not clear on what the intended interface is, as I've
never had the ALS / keyboard backlight controls all working properly on
my laptop in the first place, but I thought this would be the right
place to ask about getting the documentation and driver in sync.

NB: I came across this because

   (1) I'd really like to be able to turn the keyboard backlight on, the
   timeout off, and the ALS off; and

   (2) I noticed there was a new driver patch in 3.19 (nice! thanks!),
   where previously there must have been some kind of half-functional
   working driver -- I could get backlight control, but it always timed
   out too quickly.

It seems like /sys/.../als_setting is documented to handle the latter
part of (1), but its implementation does not match.

Thanks,
Brian

P.S. The author of this page [1] might be interested in these new driver
additions.

[1] http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/laptop/dell-e6410-fn-keys.html
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