[SOLVED] YASBI (yet another screen brightness issue)

Question

i feel silly posting this, as there seems to be a lot of documentation about this, but i'm kind of baffled.  if i run
echo "5" > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
as root, everything works nicely, my screen turns it's brightness down to half-way (max brightness is 10).
if i run the same command as sudo, i get a permissions error.  my final goal is to bind this to a key in openbox, but first i need to figure out what i'm doing wrong.  do i need to be part of a certain group?  do i need to edit my sudoers file?
thanks in advance.
Last edited by williamkray (2012-02-02 22:49:56)

Answer 1

i have solved this, and am posting how here for anyone else who might come across this in a search. this is what i came up with:
added the following to my /etc/rc.local:
chgrp users /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness && chmod g=+rw /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
then i came across this script on another forum post, and saved it to /usr/sbin/brightness, made it executable and chgrp users:
#!/bin/bash
file="/sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness"
level=$(cat $file)
if [[ "$#" -eq 0 ]]; then
cat $file
elif [[ "$1" = "-" ]]; then
echo $(( level - 1 )) > $file
elif [[ "$1" = "+" ]]; then
echo $(( level + 1 )) > $file
fi
then in my ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml i added the following code to bind the commands to my Super+Up and Super+Down :
<keybind key="W-Up">
<action name="Execute">
<command>brightness +</command>
</action>
</keybind>
<keybind key="W-Down">
<action name="Execute">
<command>brightness -</command>
</action>
</keybind>
Last edited by williamkray (2012-02-02 22:51:28)