HAL is not built with libsmbios

Support for dell backlights was integrated since hal-0.5.9.rc1, but ubuntu uses hal-0.5.8.

I tried to recompile 0.5.9.rc1 in my ubuntu, but the current patches (of 0.5.8) failed to apply and the binaries I got do not work with the gnome-power-manager. :(

I agree with Eugenia, Feisty should backport the support for dell backlights but it is not as easy as I tought.

The hal in feisty has built-in smbios support:

 * probe-smbios.c : Probe system BIOS according to the SMBIOS/DMI standard

If backlight is not working in feisty, then please file a separate bug report so we can find the root cause. On a recent test with a stack of Dell laptops, we found that they all had working brightness controls with Herd 5 (no tested were performed for earlier releases).

Actually the problem is HAL. The Brightness author asked me to debug it for him and he concluded that HAL is not built with --with-dell-backlight option. If it was, the libsmbios package would have been automatically included in Feisty's ISO. So I am not sure what separate file I should file and what for.

I also tried Feisty on another laptop, a LinuxCertified.com laptop, and the Brightness applet does not work there either.

Could you please reopen this bug?

BTW, my hardware buttons about brightness WORK (on both my laptops). What doesn't work is the Brightness Gnome APPLET. And when I emailed the applet author and looked at it he concluded that the culprit is your HAL.

Eugenia, culprit is a very harsh word - perhaps *asking* for the libsmbios stuff to be backported might have been a nicer way to ask for a solution. If the Ubuntu guys don't want to backport, then you'll have to build HAL from source yourself - this is all very new.

This is what I originally asked, to include libsmbios and have it working with their HAL. Check the first comment. The guy rejected my bug. What more should I do to make him understand that he needs to backport code to his HAL?

And I can't just recompile HAL. As Tigrux said above, simply recompiling the new HAL crashes in Ubuntu. This is something for Ubuntu to backport or fix.

I also have a Dell laptop - Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2. The brightness controls on the keyboard (Fn + Up & Down) work fine, but the brightness applet does not. I would also like HAL compiled with --with-dell-backlight if possible.

Another bug (#94329) is open describing the issue of that ubuntu build of hal lacks dell backlight support. The cause is probably that the build machine hasn't got libsmbios installed.

I have libsmbios installed and it still does not work. The problem is not libsmbios, but the fact that Ubuntu uses an older version of HAL that does not take into account libsmbios at all. I had asked to backport the HAL changes to support DELL laptops (if they didn't want to upgrade the whole HAL package), but no one at Canonical did anything about it. In fact, they even misread my bug report and they just replied "brightness works", while I was talking about the Gnome APPLET of Brightness and not the hardware buttons of any laptop for brightness.

Thanks to Erik I have manage to make the LCD backlight of my Dell laptop work. Check the bug report Bug #43572 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hal/+bug/43572)

Actually, you need to get the libsmbios source from Gutsy (as it requires a version >= 0.13) and to recompile the Hal to get the addon.

Sorry, but I use Ubuntu so I don't *have* to recompile stuff all the time. If I wanted to still have the development tools installed, I would have stayed with Arch Linux.
The Ubuntu guy who was responsible for this and my previous HAL bug report, has handled the matter very poorly IMO.

I apologise to you Eugenia, I meant to post about a work around while waiting for a fix to be committed.
So if people are too eager to get the functionality (like I was), they have some instructions to get it working (although it could break things for future updates). For the rest of the crowd, you just have to wait for a packager to compile Hal with libsmbios support and to back-port libsmbios so you have a version greater than 0.13 (Ubuntu 7.04 default version is 0.12.x) As this concern only Dell laptop users, I would expect that one will not have it working before Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon next release...

Furthermore, as I have binary deb package for a newer libsmbios (that is working with Hal) and the binary for the Hall addon that enable the LCD backlight, I could post in a near future the data directly on my website so people could install it without compiling anything.

As for your comment about the Ubuntu guy, I do not think that he handled the case poorly. Hal is a core component, modifying it too much and it might break things for many people and many application. So I guess it is better to be a bit "conservative" in the approach to Hal maintenance. This is of course a bit disappointing from a user point of view, but if you get a system that is not booting anymore, this is a much more disappointing experience (not even mentioning the notoriety impact). In my humble opinion, the Ubuntu maintainers (guy or team) have the correct approach to the problem. One should bare in mind that libsmbios is a Universe package, which is not supported by Ubuntu directly but by the community. Therefore, I am not surprised that Hal does not support it. Libsmbios first needs to be back-ported (to version 0.13 or higher) and then be integrated into the main repository of Ubuntu. This is quite an heavy change that should not be performed on stable and published release.

:-) I hope this clear up things.

I'm running the gutsy alpha, updated today (20070918), and still have issues with the backlight.
The function keys increase/decrease the brightness as normal, but the Power Manager Brightness Applet still can't control the brightness, and I don't see the option to dim the screen after a certain amount of time in Power Manager.