Dell Precision 7510 keyboard LEDs support broken on Linux

[dell]

Dell Precision 7510 keyboard LEDs support broken on Linux

[superm1]

I double checked and it's expected behavior that trackpoint and touchpad are grouped. It's not possible to separate the event streams today. Setting trackpoint will enable touchpad and vice versa.

Considering this is all expected behavior and the tools are just passing the information I'll mark this closed for libsmbios.

[superm1]

Have you already tried running this with master? There has been a lot of activity lately specifically around problems with the keyboard backlight.

[arcivanov]

The above results are with libsmbios master.
Kernel: 4.10.10-200.fc25.x86_64

[47733.398404] dell_laptop: Setting old previous keyboard state failed
[47733.398409] leds dell::kbd_backlight: Setting an LED's brightness failed (-6)

[superm1]

Oh right, I should have looked more closely at your output, you definitely have some of the stuff that was in master present there.

So what's the actual problem? When you try to select particular modes it is failing? It see it reading the current mode like it's supposed to.

[arcivanov]

@superm1

User-selectable modes work! Yay! I'll use the code here to see if I can update the kernel drivers to get them to set the values properly.

The timeouts and triggers do not, even though they can be set.

[arcivanov]

bash-4.3$ sudo ./smbios-keyboard-ctl --set-trigger
Setting Keyboard illumination Triggers 

 Select Keyboard illumination on: 
        Trigger Type            Option
------------------------------------------------
        Any Keystroke            0
        Touchpad activity        1
        Pointing stick           2
Eg: to Select Trigger for [Any Keystroke] and [Touchpad activity] specify your option like this 0,1)
Trigger on -0,1
Triggers Validated Successfully [0, 1]

New trigger parameter set Successfully

bash-4.3$ sudo ./smbios-keyboard-ctl --set-timeout-ac=10s
Setting keyboard illumination timeout value  of:  10s

 Your Keyboard will illumination on: 
        Any Keystroke
        Touchpad activity
        Pointing stick

Old Keyboard illumination battery timeout is: 10  Seconds

Old Keyboard illumination AC timeout is: 10  Seconds

New timeout-ac parameter set Successfully

[arcivanov]

Notice, that Trigger Type confirmed as stored as [0, 1], but [0, 1, 2] is reflected in --set-timeout-ac

[arcivanov]

And obviously the light stays on at levels 6 and 8 no matter what.

[superm1]

@arcivanov oh Yes, so there is a LKML thread that I posted recently to @pali the information needed to add AC timeout to fix the kernel drivers. if you've got some time to do it I'm sure @pali would appreciate the help. Please feel free to CC me ([email protected]) on the patch too.

Here is the kernel thread:
http://www.spinics.net/lists/platform-driver-x86/msg11195.html

Regarding the trigger stuff, do you actually have a pointing stick on your 7510? (Forgive me; I don't keep track of which models physically have this feature)

[arcivanov]

Yes, I do have a pointing stick. Thanks for the info!