doquesnet

Ability to change backlight brightness of MacBook Pro 5.5 (Summer 2009) is broken in default openSUSE 11.2 installation. To have it working we need to compile nvidia_bl kernel module and install it.

You should have kernel-sources package installed already. Then begin with configuring kernel (if you have not done it already) by executing:

sudo make -C /usr/src/linux oldconfig

Then download these nvidia_bl module sources (I'm not sure from where I have get these, so I have uploaded them myself).

Unpack module and run in your unpacked nvidia_bl directory:

# Change "desktop" to "defeault" if you are using "default" kernel.
make -C /usr/src/linux-obj/x86_64/desktop M=`pwd` modules
 
# Copy module to kernel modules directory.
sudo cp nvidia_bl.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/video/backlight/
 
# Rebuild modules.dep file.
sudo /sbin/depmod -a

Now its time to enable your nvidia_bl module into kernel:

sudo /sbin/modprobe nvidia_bl

You should now be able to control display backlight from your KDE Power Management applet.

To make backlight control permanently work after openSUSE restart you should add nvidia_bl into MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT section of /etc/sysconfig/kernel file. You should have smth like this in result:

## Type:		string
## ServiceRestart:	boot.loadmodules
#
# This variable contains the list of modules to be loaded
# once the main filesystem is active
# You will find a few default modules for hardware which
# can not be detected automatically.
#
MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT="nvidia_bl"