Ubuntu – Don’t the Fn keys work for brightness or media after upgrading

brightnessshortcut-keysvolume-control

I recently upgraded from 11.04 to 11.10. After the upgrade, I can no longer adjust the screen brightness or the volume using keyboard (before the upgrade, using Fn+F4, Fn+F11, etc. worked).

Using Fn+F2 to disable wireless still works, so I guess the Fn key itself is being recognised.

I tried to follow the instructions here, but I don't have a file in /etc/X11 called xorg.conf.

I also tried following this workaround, but it had no noticeable effect.

I've also tried going to Settings → Keyboard → Shortcuts and reassigning the brightness and volume controls, both to the default keys and to new combinations. These changes don't have an effect even after rebooting.

Googling has found bug reports where pressing the media keys brings up a "no entry sign" rather than changing the volume. When I press the keys there's no response at all.

I've also seen various people say a workaround is to have totem running in the background; this doesn't work for me either.

Finally, I tried installing keytouch; I was able to install keytouch-editor but got the message "Unable to locate package keytouch".

Any more ideas? I'd be very grateful if anyone could help me (even by pointing to a thread I've missed)!

Best Answer

I discovered that running gnome-settings-daemon fixes this issue (and gives me a functional battery status indicator again), so I added it to my startup commands.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Brightness controls don’t work on Macbook – Stuck on high (Nvidia GeForce 9400M)

♡ I found a solution! Hopefully someone finds this useful. I probably did more steps than required but here is what worked for me. ♡ (Nvidia users only)

Open Terminal and enter the command below to open the xorg.conf file for editing:
```
sudo -H gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
```
Once the file opens, find Section “Device” and add
```
Option "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1" 
```
(as shown below in bold line), and hit CtrlS to save it.

In my case, this file was empty so I entered the exact text and saved it to /etc/X11.

Section "Device"
Identifier      "Default Device"
Option   "NoLogo" "True"
Option "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1″
EndSection

Source

After restarting, if this did not work for you I also did the following:

Just create a file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-nvidia.conf with the following content:
```
Section "Device"
    Option "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1"
    Identifier "Device0"
EndSection
```
Again, in my case some of these files didn't exist so I created them myself. When everything was in place I restarted and now my brightness controls are working

In order to create them manually open terminal and enter:

gksu nautilus

From there on navigate to: /etc/X11/ and create a folder named xorg.conf.d. Then inside that folder create a file named 50-nvidia.conf using gedit with the content listed in the step 3.

Now restart your computer.

Source

Ubuntu – After upgrading to Ubuntu 14.04, the shortcuts keys and media keys no longer work

Killing unity-settings-daemon and running gnome-settings-daemon worked for me , or running:

gnome-settings-daemon --replace

But it's not a persistent solution. It affects all keyboard shortcuts set via
SystemSettings...→Keyboard→Shortcuts. Running Ubuntu 14.04.

(also maybe interesting: some shortcuts that were set before updating from 13.04 to 14.04 still worked, but as soon as I reassign them in the System Settings, they stop working with unity-settings-daemon)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Brightness controls don’t work on Macbook – Stuck on high (Nvidia GeForce 9400M)

Ubuntu – After upgrading to Ubuntu 14.04, the shortcuts keys and media keys no longer work

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