Why don't my Fn keys work for brightness or media after upgrading?

Posted by Adina G on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by Adina G
Published on 2011-12-21T04:06:20Z Indexed on 2012/04/15 11:49 UTC
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I recently upgraded from 11.04 to 11.10. After the upgrade, I can no longer adjust the screen brightness or the volume using keyboard (before the upgrade, using Fn+F4, Fn+F11, etc. worked).

Using Fn+F2 to disable wireless still works, so I guess the Fn key itself is being recognised.

I tried to follow the instructions here, but I don't have a file in /etc/X11 called xorg.conf.

I also tried following this workaround, but it had no noticeable effect.

I've also tried going to Settings ? Keyboard ? Shortcuts and reassigning the brightness and volume controls, both to the default keys and to new combinations. These changes don't have an effect even after rebooting.

Googling has found bug reports where pressing the media keys brings up a "no entry sign" rather than changing the volume. When I press the keys there's no response at all.

I've also seen various people say a workaround is to have totem running in the background; this doesn't work for me either.

Finally, I tried installing keytouch; I was able to install keytouch-editor but got the message "Unable to locate package keytouch".

Any more ideas? I'd be very grateful if anyone could help me (even by pointing to a thread I've missed)!

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