How can I enable keyboard backlight on Sony Vaio pro with Ubuntu 13.10

Question

How can I enable keyboard backlight on Sony Vaio pro with Ubuntu 13.10?

I have already tried setting the bit in /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/kbd_backlight with

echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/kbd_backlight

and when saving the file I can see the bit has changed, but my keyboard still stays off.

Has anyone else had this problem, and found a way to fix this?

Solution

Check also /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/kbd_backlight_timeout where:

• 0(default) = 10 secs
• 1 = 30 secs,
• 2 = 60 secs and
• 3 = unlimited.

Or possibly use a /etc/modprobe.d/sony-laptop.conf file with:

options sony-laptop kbd_backlight=2