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Isaac Lacort
Asked: 2018-10-23 02:44:23 +0800 CST

Keyboard backlight Ubuntu 18.10 not working

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I have a problem with the new version of Ubuntu. I used to have Ubuntu 18.04 LTS version, but I decided to change to the normal version and update it to Ubuntu 18.10. Since then I can't turn the keyboard backlight on.

I have already tried to open a terminal and type: xset led 1 ... xset led 32, but it doesn't work. I have also tried to turn it on by pressing Fn+F4 and that shows the picture of the keyboard backlight but without the blue progressbar.

Fn+F4

Does somebody know how I could fix it or what the problem is?

asus keyboard-backlight 18.10

5 Answers

  1. Open terminal and type, hit enter

    sudo /etc/acpi/asus-keyboard-backlight.sh

    It will turn on your asus laptop backlight.

    This script comes with acpi-support package.

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  2. Best Answer

    I was having the same issue on my UX430, to fix it just update your kernel to 4.19. You don't get the on screen display but it does now at least work

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  3. Same issue here on a MacBook Air. I can control the keyboard backlight by echoing a value into 

    /sys/class/leds/smc::kbd_backlight/brightness

    Therefore, I thought it was not a kernel bug... and 4.19 does not solve the problem for me.

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  4. I was able to solve this.

    Try browsing the /sys/class/leds/ directory. In my case I found 2 files that pertains to keyboard:

    asus::kbd_backlight
asus::kbd_backlight_1

    First file has 3 in it but the second has 0, so I set it to 3 as well and viola, it worked.

    Now I wonder why did I had 2 files that pertains to keyboard brightness? can somebody point me to the config that reads out the files above so that I can correct which file to point it? TIA.

    Note: I'm running 4.18

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  5. In my ZenBook pro UX580 the settings could be found in: 

    /sys/class/leds/asus::kbd_backlight

    The file holds single value - 0. Replace it with grater number and you will have keyboard backlight on.

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