Ultranote II: Hot keys (report)

[hogfish]

Hotkeys on the Ultranote II = Clevo W550SU

I am using debian testing and xfce4.

On first take (around 1 month ago), many of the hot keys did not seem to be working, so it seems
worthwhile to post this in case others have problems.

First, it appeared that the brightness keys (Fn/F8, Fn/F9) were not working. Much later
I realized that they were, but each keypress made such a small difference that it was almost
imperceptible. Also the version of xfce4-brightness-plugin installed back then did not
"see" the keys. The current version has solved both problems: it responds to the keys,
and uses a much larger brightness increment.

Note that regardless of X and so on, we have both

/sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0
/sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight

and

echo n > brightness

works where the range for n
can be read from

max_brightness

in those directories.
I suspect that you need to be root to do the above, but it should work even when no X is running.

One hotkey that I had overlooked, probably because it is not marked on the keyboard is Fn/1
which gives fan control. I had found my CPU running a bit warm for comfort, and discovering this control
was very useful.

With a fully updated debian testing, it seems that:

• Play/pause is captured by the Xwindow system as X86AudioPlay, so media players that notice that event should work. vlc is one such. So working.
• Fn/F1 Touchpad toggle. Working.
• Fn/F2 LCD backlight. Working.
• Fn/F3 Mute Toggle. Probably working in that at least one xfce4 plugin notices it. Does not in fact mute sound with plain alsa AFAICS.
• Fn/F5 & Fn/F6 Volume controls. Not working with plain alsa out of box. May need configuration?
• Fn/F7 Display switch. Working.
• Fn/F8 & Fn/F9. Brightness. Working as above
• Fn/F10 Webcam power toggle. Turns off ok. Toggle back on seems not to work with either cheese or guvcview.
• Fn/F11 Wifi toggle. Not properly tested.
• Num lock. Working.
• Scr lock. Seems to be working. Seen as an X event.
• Fn/1. Not marked on keyboard! Fan full/automatic. Working.

 

[hogfish]

Fn/F4 "Sleep" also working.

I forgot to include:

• Fn/F4 Sleep. Working. Tested with xfce4-power-manager.

That key can be bound to Hibernate or Suspend (power manager configuration). Both seem to work here.

 

[hogfish]

Airplane Mode

Another update:

• Fn/F11. "Airplane mode". Seems to do nothing.

I gather that this is supposed to turn off wifi. It does not do that, and the LED does not illuminate.
I can't remember whether there was a BIOS option to disable this function, but if so that might
be the explanation. The key does not seem to generate an X event (tested with xev), so
perhaps it is intercepted by the BIOS. Hence the last comment.

I can't say any of this bothers me, but it would be nice to know what is going on.

In passing, wifi now seems to be working properly. Driver iwlwifi .