[Intel-gfx] [PATCH] backlight: Don't read back backlight setting from kernel on DPMS off

[Hans de Goede]

Hi,

On 06/05/2014 10:24 PM, Chris Wilson wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 05, 2014 at 09:08:33PM +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
>> Note that it is read after the framebuffer has been resized and a new mode
>> has been set on "pipe 0 using LVDS1", could this perhaps cause the 0 to be
>> read when using actual_brightness ?
> 
> Indeed, that is likely the explanation, and shows the fallacy in the
> current approach. And also explains why acpi_backlight works with the
> current code, but that the kernel interfering with intel_backlight does
> not.
>  
>> Also I've just had a user who has been testing this patch come back to
>> me it does help, but he still has a suspend/resume issue. It seems that
>> some X app / gnome-component is doing the following:
>>
>> 1) DPMS off
>> 2) Read backlight xrandr property -> this will now return 0
>> 3) Set backlight xrandr property value to the value just read, aka 0
>> 4) DPMS on -> "restores" backlight to 0 because of the property set
>>
>> I believe the best way to fix this will be to make
>> xxx_output_get_property("backlight") return backlight_active_level
>> when in DPMS off, rather then calling xxx_output_backlight_get.
> 
> I had the same thought when reviewing the code following your email. I
> modified sna, but I think I want to restructure how backlight is saved
> around modesets.

Ok, FWIW attached is a patch which I'm asking the user to test to confirm that
the above steps 1-4 are the problem of his suspend / resume problems.

About solving this differently / more completely why is the driver saving
the brightness at all? IMHO the driver / xrandr property should be the canonical
source of the brightness level once X is running, so we should only read it once
on init and then just always use backlight_active_level, this way the code becomes
simpler and we won't have any of this issues.

I really so no use-case where we want something to change the brightness underneath
us and then for the driver to correctly pick up this change.

One last question, should I ask users with this problem to re-test using the brightness
sysfs file in the xxx_output_get_property methods instead of the actual_brightness
sysfs file as the 2.21.15 version they have is doing ?

Regards,

Hans