Backlight and web camera issue on Acer Nitro AN515-58

Scinti

Hi! I have a notebook Acer Nitro AN515-58 and I had installed Ubuntu on it instead of Win11.

It has 2 issues: 1) the web camera doesn't work; 2) the brightness control doesn't work.

I had tried to reinstall Ubuntu 20.04 / 22.04 multiple times, but that didn't help.

So, my current configuration: Ubuntu 22.04, kernel 5.19.0-35-generic, Nvidia-drivers version 530.30.02, nouveau blacklisted.

1)Web camera issue the same as in this post with the same outputs:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AcerNitro/comments/ys6k0o/acer_nitro_5_an51558_no_driver_linux_for_camera/

They say that there is a problem with drivers, but I have available Acer Nitro AN515-57 with the same camera and Ubuntu 20.04 and it has no issues. So, I would be grateful for a piece of advice on what I can check.

2)Brightness control doesn't work

Slider on the menu, fn+keys, xbacklight can't change my brightness. After logging out/suspending and reentering it also doesn't work.

I tried:

• Different Nvidia drivers (515, 525, 530, all proprietary, not open)
• Ubuntu 20/22
• Adding Option “RegistryDwords” “EnableBrightnessControl=1” to Nvidia config (freezing during boot)
• Deleting xorg.conf.new (nothing). Reinstalling xorg server
• nvidia-xconfig (freezing during boot)
• Adding acpi_backlight=.. (all combinations) to grub (nothing changed)
• Adding "nvidia.NVreg_EnableBacklightHandler=1" to grub (nothing)
• It also doesn't work without Nvidia drivers (xorg-xserver nouveau)

Please, help me)

JackE

What BIOS firmware version number do you have? Two recent updates released in the past month might affect part of your issues.

rpaco

Did you find a solution? I have the same problem with the background light control.

I have also tried everything you mention.

billsey

The AN515-58 models have been out long enough now that the Linux kernel developers should have done support for them by now. Which distribution are you running?

rpaco

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1216899#Comment_1216899

I am running Ubuntu 22.04.02 LTS with 6.2.0-26 generic.

wagnasla

abcdefg124563

wagnasla

Hi! 😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊


I noticed that there wasn't an answer yet, but if anyone has the same problem with brightess, watch this video:


it solved my problem and the explanation is very detailed

Click here!


However about the camera problem I am also facing so if anyone knows how to solve it it will be very useful.

rpaco

Backlight problem solved by the video as indicated by wagnasia above.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeMuvjgM2U0&t=3s&ab_channel=TechnoPhoenix

In short having tried all the other suggested grub edits this one worked . As copied from the video

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DFAULT="quiet splash pcie_aspm=force acpi_acklight=native"

BTW I am now using "Grub Customiser" to modify grub as it is much faster and automatically updates grub.

( https://itsfoss.com/install-grub-customizer-ubuntu/ )

Many thanks to all those who tried to help.

JackE

Thanks for reports.

Scinti

Thank you all for the replies, sorry that I ghosted.

I'm afraid of updating BIOS because I deleted Windows and installed Ubuntu, and then I discovered that BIOS should be updated only using Windows.

So, I found some temporary solutions to these problems:

1. Web camera

- From Ubuntu Software & updates enable source code
- fetch the source code with the following in terminal

apt-get source linux-modules-extra-$(uname -r)

- Then navigate to the /drivers/media/usb/uvc directory and rename the uvcdriver.c to uvcdriver.old, choose open directory in terminal then

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Giuliano69/uvc_driver-for-Quanta-HD-User-Facing-0x0408-0x4035-/main/uvc_driver.c

make -j4 -C /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build M=$(pwd) modules
sudo cp uvcvideo.ko /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/media/usb/uvc/

Then the web camera works, but you should do it again after every Ubuntu update.

2. Backlight

I discovered this repo that contains scripts that modify the actual_backlight file to manage brightness. It also can be bonded to keys which is very convenient. However, this work only for kernels 5.15 - 5.19. With 6.2 it didn't work for me.

GitHub - MasterDevX/linux-backlight-controller: A simple shell script to control brightness at hardware level 

Download script 

chmod 777 ./brightness.sh 

Try to execute

Bind to keys (Settings -> Keyboard shortcuts -> Custom shortcuts) 

sudo /usr/bin/bash /path/to/script/backlight.sh + 5 

sudo /usr/bin/bash /path/to/script/backlight.sh - 5 

Add commands to sudoers 

https://askubuntu.com/questions/159007/how-do-i-run-specific-sudo-commands-without-a-password

sudo EDITOR=nano visudo -f /etc/sudoers.d/brightness 

user_name ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/bash  /path/to/script/backlight.sh * 

reboot


For convenience, I also created a separate script that shows the current brightness level as a notification, because Ubuntu still doesn't show this.

It works a bit slowly but really modifies brightness, so, it worked for me.

JackE

I'm afraid of updating BIOS because I deleted Windows and installed
Ubuntu, and then I discovered that BIOS should be updated only using
Windows.

Yes, good decision. Also a good decision to install Linux alongside a small or even medium size Windows partition —— to make BIOS updates and other system tweaks perhaps less stressful & frustrating when they seem to be needed. Storage media are so big, so fast & so cheap nowadays, there's little or no reason not to have multi-boot capability just in case. Thanks for your report and workarounds. 🙂

billsey

I believe you can also do BIOS updates from the Windows install command prompt environment…