Run script at boot as root to reset keyboard backlight

[Sikh]

Fellow Penguin Loving Neowinians,

 

I have tried everything I can and cant figure this out so im asking for help. I would like to basically set my keyboard backlight to 0 after the x session has started. Basically when the computer boots, backlight on keyboard is off until the xsession starts. Once the x session starts and I have a login screen, BAM FULL BRIGHTNESS on the backlight. I found the file im suppose to "echo 0" to. I put the one liner in rc.local and it didnt run. The one liner to set my screen brightness to a custom value and not full brightness works when in rc.local. But, I can put the keyboard backlight one liner under it and it doesnt work. I can put it above it, and it quits the script because then my full screen brightness one liner doesnt work.

I figured this might have something to do with X because rc.local runs before X does. So everything is fine until X is init/started and then the file with the brightness value gets modified. This is what I assume because I can get the screen brightness to set on boot everytime with rc.local but not the backlight for the keyboard.

Ive tried calling a script with the code for the keyboard backlight reset and that didnt work. I then had the script get called, and enter sleep for a minute before it ran the command incase the X session didnt start when the script was ran, that didnt work either. I tried value's all the way up to 5 and nothing worked.

So, thats what ive done and would appreciate any help. The one liner is

# set keyboard backlight so its not at max on boot
echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/smc::kbd_backlight/brightness

I should add that both commands need to be run by root. So thats why I thought rc.local would be good. If I do .gnomrc or .bash_login like ive been reading, it wont work becuase it would run as me. If I sudo it, it would ask for a password. I could echo a password and pipe it to sudo, or add myself to the sudoers but neither is secure or ideal. What I would like to do is find a "rc.local" way of launching this script as root without user interaction and have my little "patches" work. The screen one works fine, I have one for keyboard backlight and a few others that I would like to run on start up since they cant be made persistent.

If you have any additional questions or need logs please ask. I dont know what log to look at to see what line/command failed when rc.local was called or I would look there. Heres hoping someone else knows how to fix my problem.

Thanks,
Sikh

[netventure]

After reading the first few lines, I was thinking "this needs to go in rc.local" but it's great that you've tried that and identified the real cause.

Since you've narrowed it down to the Xserver, you can try putting the echo command in .xinitrc (somwhere at the bottom of the file).

 

I haven't touched this in a long time, so things might have changed. If Ubuntu/Xorg has moved this out of ~/.xinitrc, try the xsession file.

More on this at: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/47359/what-is-xsession-for

 

Cheers.

nv

[Sikh]

After reading the first few lines, I was thinking "this needs to go in rc.local" but it's great that you've tried that and identified the real cause.

Since you've narrowed it down to the Xserver, you can try putting the echo command in .xinitrc (somwhere at the bottom of the file).

 

I haven't touched this in a long time, so things might have changed. If Ubuntu/Xorg has moved this out of ~/.xinitrc, try the xsession file.

More on this at: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/47359/what-is-xsession-for

 

Cheers.

nv

 

Thanks for the reply man. Im going to try this and report back

[Haggis Veteran]

did it work :)