Running Ubuntu 12.04, I can't get the keyboard backlight on a Macbook Pro (mid 2012) to turn on. When I press the brightness button, the display shows up on full but the lights do not turn on. It shows full always on the screen, but they never turn on. I don't really care about getting the keys to work, but I just want something like a terminal command just to get them on. (I don't care about the intervals, I just want the backlight on!!!)
Any help is great,
Thanks,
Skyler
Best Answer
The Ubuntu documentation page has the following information in relation to the Macbook.
LCD Brightness Control
The package nvidia-bl-dkms is not available for 12.04. Fortunately, the following procedure works (taken from http://www.voria.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1091):
If backlight control does not work for you, follow these instructions:
Edit the file '/etc/X11/xorg.conf' and add this line into the Device section:
Reboot and check if backlight control works. If so, you're done. If not, edit the file '/etc/default/grub' and change the line:
Update grub with this command: sudo update-grub Reboot and backlight control should work.
If it still doesn't work, try installing the nvidia-bl-dkms package from mactel-support for Natty (from https://launchpad.net/~mactel-support/+archive/ppa), this was the only way for me to get the backlight control working on Precise. Results may vary as some people claim this driver does not work on Precise.
Link to these info is below.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro5-5/Precise
Also this blog appears to have used a script to get it to work.
http://www.mabishu.com/blog/2010/06/24/macbook-pro-keyboard-backlight-keys-on-ubuntu-gnulinux/
Best of luck!