FnFX 0.3 review

FnFX enables owners of Toshiba laptops to change the LCD brightness, control, the internal fan and use the special keys on their keyb

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Timo Hoenig

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FnFX enables owners of Toshiba laptops to change the LCD brightness, control, the internal fan and use the special keys on their keyboard (Fn-x combinations, hot-keys).

The internal functions will give the possibility to map the Fn-Keys to functions like volume up/down, mute, suspend to disk, suspend to ram and switch LCD/CRT/TV-out. These functions heavily depend on the system and/or kernel configuration.

You will need at least a kernel (v2.4.x, v2.5.x, v2.6.x) with ACPI and Toshiba support (CONFIG_ACPI and CONFIG_ACPI_TOSHIBA).

Requirements:

Hardware Requirements:

Any recent Toshiba model. Recent means: Every Toshiba laptop built in 2002 and later will work with FnFX. A list with verified and tested Toshiba laptops is found under 3.2.

One exception: There are a few laptops which do not have a Toshiba (e.g. Satellite P25-S520) but a Phoenix BIOS. These machines will fail on loading the Toshiba ACPI driver and hence will not be supported by FnFX.

Software Requirements:

Linux v2.4.x
Linux v2.5.x
Linux v2.6.x

All Linux v2.4.x kernels will need ACPI patches. All 'major' distributions already roll out v2.4.x kernels with these patches. To make it short: at least CONFIG_ACPI and CONFIG_ACPI_TOSHIBA must be defined in the kernel config.

All v2.5.x and v2.6.x kernels already have the required ACPI drivers. Again: ACPI must be enabled. CONFIG_ACPI and CONFIG_ACPI_TOSHIBA are your friends.

To check if ACPI and ACPI Toshiba support are enabled check the following proc entries exists:

/proc/acpi
/proc/acpi/toshiba

If they do exist, FnFX will work on that system. If they do not exist try `modprobe toshiba_acpi' as root. If this throws errors like 'FATAL: Module toshiba_acpi not found' the kernel is most likely not compiled with CONFIG_ACPI and CONFIG_ACPI_TOSHIBA.

Please recompile your kernel with the ACPI drivers or have a look for a precompiled kernel for your distribution which has ACPI and ACPI Toshiba support.

What's New in This Release:
Updated: README: Hint that laptops without Toshiba BIOS are not supported.
Updated: README: Supported models
Updated: README: New section 3.3 Known Laptops Which Do Not Work
Updated: etc/keymap: Many new recognized Fn-combinations
Fix: Writing correct PID file
Improvement: Make Polling more efficient
New Feature: Setting default brightness at startup of fnfxd
New Feature: New internal commands: toggle bluetooth and toggle cpu