Screen Brightness on new MacBook Pro 8,3?

Question

2011 8,3 MacBook Pro running 64bit 11.10.

The screen brightness keys seem to actually do things, but nothing actually changes with regard to actual laptop screen brightness. (See this video. Ubuntu can sense when the buttons are pressed, but nothing actually happens with screen brightness. I know you wouldn't be able to see it if it did work, but it doesn't.)

Is this a known issue? How can I adjust the screen brightness on my MacBook Pro?

I know I can do something like this in the AMD/ATI FGLRX configuration software, but it actually just adjusts the output picture, not the physical laptop's screen brightness. What can I do?

Answer 1

Are you using ubuntu on mac? If yes then you can change your screen brightness using the following command:

echo 4 | sudo tee /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness

Value range: 1 to 10 [1 lowest, 10 highest]

Also you can set the brightness at start-up. Append the line in /etc/rc.local before exit 0

Answer 2

I have a white MacBook running Ubuntu and the brightness keys work fine; however, it does seem to be an issue with the MacBook Pro (I don't have one handy to test on). But I did find this in my search. It looks like a script that you can bind to a key event. The tutorial covers KDE, but binding a script to a key in Gnome is relatively simple as well, if I recall correctly. Does this properly address your problem?

Answer 3

Apparently, you need to boot to EFI, not to emulated BIOS, as is what happens with rEFIt.