Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2

Q&A
1

My setup:
Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2 - 2021
Code Name - Nightfury
Intel Core i3-10110U Processor/ 2.1 GHz / 4MB Cache - CometLake
Series - XE530QDA-KB1US
ASIN - B099MRV2TL

BIOS flshed to Windows/Linux by mrchromebox script

I am completely ecstatic over the fact that the installation from the Live iso was Flawless and that EVERYTHING is working!!!

I would like to know how I can turn on the keyboard backlighting.

Can someone please lend me a hand here?

Thank you very much in advance!

Roger

2

What was the behavior of the backlight before you made the changes? Automatic @ boot? A function keystroke?

3

Thank you for reaching out!

It was always enabled, but controllable thru ALT Screen Brightess up and down buttons along the top row.

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Roger

4

Two things to look at.

Some Chromebooks have an ambient light sensor near the blue power LED. This determines if the keyboard should be lit. Cover it if you have one and see if the keyboard lights.

Second, according to the specs the backlight is controlled through the powerd daemon.

Have you looked at the power setting in the gnome power manager?

If that doesnt help you may need to activate the backlight through a boot command. See reference below for some clues, but I havent found a specific reference.

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/HEAD/power_manager/docs/keyboard_backlight.md

5

I didn’t see a light sensor near the power switch, but that gave me the idea to see whether they could be using the camera for the same function. They may be using it, but overing the sensor there didn’t do it for me.

I couldn’t find any setting in the Power Manager or using dconf. But, i may have missed something there.

I’ll check out the link and get back with you soon…

Again, thank you for stepping up and reaching out.

6

I could not find anything (again) in dconf or in Tweaks. I changed to the Flatpak version of tweaks and nothing there either…

7

In reading the article, I noticed this reference:
keyboard_backlight_keep_on_ms as being a value within Preferences.
Where (and How) would one find, check and set, an appropriate value?

keyboard_backlight_user_steps is another one listed…

Roger

8

Here is a post on setting the backlight “on” in Ubuntu.

9

Thank you.
If I can’t find what I need in the powerd service settings then I may need to flash the BIOS to an Intel BIOS.

I’ll look into the /sys/devices/ section and modprobe later today.

10

Are you running the original BIOS or did the script install Coreboot in its place?

11

No. I used a flash available via a script from: