Turning of lcd when lid closes

spqrdecker · Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2004 4:06 am Post subject: Turning of lcd when lid closes

I am trying to make my laptop turn off its lcd (esp. the backlight) whenever I close the lid. I can figure out how to make it hibernate (or do whatever...) because lid cloure is an event that acpi can recognize (discussed elshwhere in forum: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=265109&highlight=lid) I just can't figure out how to make the lcd turn off (not just go blank), whenever I close the lid. Making it hibernate is useless, becuase I want music to keep playing, stuff to keep compiling, etc. I just don't want to have to waste battery power on a screen nobody can see. Any ideas?

Jake · Veteran Joined: 31 Jul 2003 Posts: 1132

I use the Xorg radeon driver for my Compaq N800w and have the following:

spqrdecker · Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2004 5:20 am Post subject:

I am also using the Xorg radeon driver (open source, not ati's), but I don't have 'radeontool'. After a quick search, I found its ebuild and I shall try it and report back. Thank you.

spqrdecker · Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2004 6:12 am Post subject:

Okay, the radeontool works fine from the command line. Now, I can't get acpid to recognize lid closure as an event (I checked in /var/log/acpid). What gives?

Jake · Veteran Joined: 31 Jul 2003 Posts: 1132

Does "/proc/acpi/button/lid/C136/state" change when you press the button? "C136" might be different in your path. If it doesn't change in /proc, the kernel doesn't know about your lid switch, so either you missed an option in the config, or it isn't supported. If it isn't supported, ATI's proprietary drivers might still work.

spqrdecker · Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2004 7:01 am Post subject:

What button? It's my lid. And yes, I've tried looking in /proc/acpi/button/lid/LID/state, but I can't tell if it changes when I close it because I can't read the screen with the lid closed.

Jengu · Guru Joined: 28 Oct 2004 Posts: 384

On my laptop, if I have the DPMS option on in my xorg.conf and acpi in my kernel, all I have to do is close the lid and wait fifteen seconds and it turns off. Check to make sure that it isn't just taking while to switch off. I haven't messed with any power management config files at all it does this.

spqrdecker · Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2004 7:22 am Post subject:

I have both DPMS enabled in xorg.conf as well as ACPI compiled into the kernel, but I can not seem to get this to work, no matter how long I wait. But I am out of ideas...

Jake · Veteran Joined: 31 Jul 2003 Posts: 1132

spqrdecker · Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2004 9:14 am Post subject:

Thanks for the sleep 5 idea! It proved what I had been suspecting: there is no way for my laptop to know it's closed. And no, there isn't a button (I'm assuming it would be a smaller version of what one finds in a washing machine), but there should be. Thank you for all of your help, but I think that my problem has nothing to do with software config, but with the fact that my low-end Dell was not built with that little button.

As a short post-script, I've tried the ati-drivers. While they can do some serious eye-candy GL magic, they generally stink otherwise, esp. on fullscreen video (they can't use the Xv extension). And they didn't make the lid blank the lcd when it closed either, because, "Dude I got a Dell".