Problems Encountered with Installation on an ASUS R501VM Laptop

[SteveRiley]

Please verify that

sudo modprobe asus-nm-wmi

works again. Note that the difference between not-working and working is obvious when you run

ls -al /sys/class/leds

You may need to put that first command in /etc/rc.local instead. But that would be weird.

[SteveRiley]

Yes it is good and I hope he wins the next election. We may be overseas when the election is called and my wife called the electoral office today so that we could be exempt from voting if we are away during the election. We will be away for 6 weeks and only out of contact sometimes.

But isn't he facing a monumental challenge trying to maintain a minority government a second time?

And why would you want to be exempt? I understand that voting in Oz is compulsory (which I think is great). Can you file a vote from abroad?

[NoWorries]

Yes, you are correct. Voting is compulsory in Oz, but an option was to post the voting to us while away. The problem is that we will be moving around a bit. We will start by visiting our Son and his family in the UK, doing a 12 day tour of Scandinavia, going to Salzburg, Hallstatt, Vienna and then back to the UK before our return to Oz. So, contacting us by post could be problematic. Email is possible but hardly secure for voting.

Since Oz is a long way from the rest of the Western world, we tend to make the most of our trips. I am beginning to think that we will have to start and do shorter trips in order to visit our Grandson in the UK. My wife will find it increasingly difficult to rely on Skype communication and will want to see, touch and cudle.

[NoWorries]

Please verify that

sudo modprobe asus-nm-wmi

works again. Note that the difference between not-working and working is obvious when you run

ls -al /sys/class/leds

You may need to put that first command in /etc/rc.local instead. But that would be weird.

Firstly, I tried the modinfo comands that you showed and I get:

:~$ modinfo asus-nb-wmi
filename:       /lib/modules/3.10.0-5-generic/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/asus-nb-wmi.ko
alias:          wmi:0B3CBB35-E3C2-45ED-91C2-4C5A6D195D1C
license:        GPL
description:    Asus Notebooks WMI Hotkey Driver
author:         Corentin Chary <corentin.chary@gmail.com>
srcversion:     5BDE545E9BC01354BA5ED45
depends:        asus-wmi
intree:         Y
vermagic:       3.10.0-5-generic SMP mod_unload modversions 
parm:           wapf:WAPF value (uint)
:~$ modinfo asus-wmi
filename:       /lib/modules/3.10.0-5-generic/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/asus-wmi.ko
license:        GPL
description:    Asus Generic WMI Driver
author:         Corentin Chary <corentin.chary@gmail.com>, Yong Wang <yong.y.wang@intel.com>
srcversion:     C7ED5DF3058308896E8A99A
depends:        sparse-keymap,wmi,video
intree:         Y
vermagic:       3.10.0-5-generic SMP mod_unload modversions 
:~$ modinfo wmi
filename:       /lib/modules/3.10.0-5-generic/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/wmi.ko
license:        GPL
description:    ACPI-WMI Mapping Driver
author:         Carlos Corbacho
srcversion:     375B15B80222C7C3B79549F
alias:          acpi*:pnp0c14:*
alias:          acpi*:PNP0C14:*
depends:        
intree:         Y
vermagic:       3.10.0-5-generic SMP mod_unload modversions 
parm:           debug_event:Log WMI Events [0/1] (bool)
parm:           debug_dump_wdg:Dump available WMI interfaces [0/1] (bool)
:~$

When I try the modeprobe and ls comands I get:

:~$ sudo modprobe asus-nm-wmi
FATAL: Module asus-nm-wmi not found.
:~$ ls -al /sys/class/leds
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 0 Jul 25 10:12 .
drwxr-xr-x 54 root root 0 Jul 25 10:12 ..
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 0 Jul 25 10:12 ath9k-phy0 -> ../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.1/0000:03:00.0/leds/ath9k-phy0
:~$

I am starting to wonder if the problems are caused by a race condition in the kernel software. After installing updates this morning followed a reboot, the backlights came on but were not controllable by the function keys. After a reboot, they did not come on and they have not been on since a couple of reboots.

[SteveRiley]

You might try a variation of the instructions here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1298213

1. Fiddle around until both asus-wmi and asus-nm-wmi will both load. modprobeing both should eventually get this to happen.

2. Make a new initramfs:

update-initramfs -c -k all

3. Cold boot and see what happens

[NoWorries]

You might try a variation of the instructions here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1298213

1. Fiddle around until both asus-wmi and asus-nm-wmi will both load. modprobeing both should eventually get this to happen.

2. Make a new initramfs:

update-initramfs -c -k all

3. Cold boot and see what happens

This is getting to be very elusive as after doing the following,

 sudo update-initramfs -c -k all

I still got the same results from modprobe, namely the "Module asus-nm-wmi not found" message.

I noticed that the archlinux problems were with Kernel 3.9.3 and on Kubuntu 13.04, I have no problems with the backlights. As you can see I have Kernel 3.10.0-5 and I remember seeing that this problem was supposed to be fixed in this Kernel.