gnome's volume control and thinkpad volume buttons

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tony11235 · Post by **tony11235** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 4:23 pm

Have any thinkpad users gotten their volume control buttons to interact with gnome's volume control? I mean yeah the buttons work volume-wise, but can they possibly control the level that gnome's volume is at?

IQgryn · Post by **IQgryn** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 6:05 pm

gnome-volume-manager has to do with handling partitions and removable devices, not sound. What do you mean by "the buttons work volume-wise", and what additional functionality are you looking for?

tony11235 · Post by **tony11235** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 4:22 am

IQgryn wrote:gnome-volume-manager has to do with handling partitions and removable devices, not sound. What do you mean by "the buttons work volume-wise", and what additional functionality are you looking for?

What I MEAN is the following: the volume buttons work of course, you can control the sound levels (mute, up, down). BUT gnome's volume control is not aware of the status. I could have muted the sound via the buttons, but the volume icon's status would tell you otherwise. All I'm asking is if there is a way to make the volume control interact WITH the buttons. So that the status of the two are the same.

Gwrynn · Post by **Gwrynn** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 8:53 am

As far as I can remember, the package tpb (ThinkPadButtons) which supports some of the special keys on your thinkpad has an built-in functionality to change the volume setting of your software mixer (at least through OSS).

I've never used it, but it's worth a try. (Have also a look at http://www.thinkwiki.org)

cheers
gwrynn

tony11235 · Post by **tony11235** » Tue May 01, 2007 1:47 pm

While tpb does work, I'd prefer that Gnome recognized the buttons.

tony11235 · Post by **tony11235** » Sat Jun 23, 2007 1:52 am

Ok for a while I was satisfied with just opening up a root terminal and entering "tpb -d", but I would really just like it to start in sessions/startup programs. I have
"KERNEL=="nvram", MODE="664""

in my 50-udev.rules, so as a normal user I SHOULD be able to control the volume using tpb. I don't know why I still can't.

hammy · Post by **hammy** » Sun Jun 24, 2007 6:24 am

I have a thinkpad z61m, and the volume control keys work in hardware, to the best of my knowledge. I expect there may be a clever way to monitor the level via /proc/acpi/ibm/volume and set the Master/PCM level accordingly. That might just half the resolution of your volume control though, since each button press will decrease both HW and the software mixer's volume.

tony11235 · Post by **tony11235** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 3:26 am

Yes the volume control keys work in hardware. But getting tpb and and pcm control to interact has been a bitch. I'll get it sometime. I really wonder how Feisty gets it to work. Right after installation, the volume control keys, pcm, are all in sync. And Gnome displays the volume changes, not tpb. tpb isn't even used.