Manjaro Qonos 21.2.4 Brightness Issue

Hello! I did a fresh install of Manjaro 21.2.4 (Kernel 5.15.25-1-MANJARO). I am unable to change the brightness for my screen, if I try to change the brightness it will give me the icon saying the brightness is changing but the actual brightness is staying at 100%. My installation is on a Lenovo laptop with an integrated AMD CPU/GPU and a dedicated NVIDIA GPU.

Which graphical drivers are used? What is the output of hwinfo --gfx within a terminal?

The output of hwinfo --gfx is as follows

15: PCI 100.0: 0300 VGA compatible controller (VGA)             
  [Created at pci.386]
  Unique ID: VCu0.vcvXg5y6ps7
  Parent ID: mnDB.L2l2y4m79O6
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.1/0000:01:00.0
  SysFS BusID: 0000:01:00.0
  Hardware Class: graphics card
  Model: "nVidia TU116M [GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile]"
  Vendor: pci 0x10de "nVidia Corporation"
  Device: pci 0x2191 "TU116M [GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile]"
  SubVendor: pci 0x17aa "Lenovo"
  SubDevice: pci 0x3a46 
  Revision: 0xa1
  Driver: "nvidia"
  Driver Modules: "nvidia"
  Memory Range: 0xd0000000-0xd0ffffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
  Memory Range: 0x1ffc0000000-0x1ffcfffffff (ro,non-prefetchable)
  Memory Range: 0x1ffd0000000-0x1ffd1ffffff (ro,non-prefetchable)
  I/O Ports: 0x3000-0x307f (rw)
  Memory Range: 0xd1080000-0xd10fffff (ro,non-prefetchable,disabled)
  IRQ: 98 (192 events)
  Module Alias: "pci:v000010DEd00002191sv000017AAsd00003A46bc03sc00i00"
  Driver Info #0:
    Driver Status: nouveau is not active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe nouveau"
  Driver Info #1:
    Driver Status: nvidia_drm is active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe nvidia_drm"
  Driver Info #2:
    Driver Status: nvidia is active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe nvidia"
  Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
  Attached to: #27 (PCI bridge)

28: PCI 500.0: 0300 VGA compatible controller (VGA)
  [Created at pci.386]
  Unique ID: Ddhb.a2V5Dhrwnb8
  Parent ID: JZZT.e+TNXSUNut3
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:08.1/0000:05:00.0
  SysFS BusID: 0000:05:00.0
  Hardware Class: graphics card
  Model: "ATI Renoir"
  Vendor: pci 0x1002 "ATI Technologies Inc"
  Device: pci 0x1636 "Renoir"
  SubVendor: pci 0x17aa "Lenovo"
  SubDevice: pci 0x3a46 
  Revision: 0xc6
  Driver: "amdgpu"
  Driver Modules: "amdgpu"
  Memory Range: 0x1ffe0000000-0x1ffefffffff (ro,non-prefetchable)
  Memory Range: 0x1fff0000000-0x1fff01fffff (ro,non-prefetchable)
  I/O Ports: 0x1000-0x10ff (rw)
  Memory Range: 0xd1500000-0xd157ffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
  IRQ: 65 (no events)
  Module Alias: "pci:v00001002d00001636sv000017AAsd00003A46bc03sc00i00"
  Driver Info #0:
    Driver Status: amdgpu is active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe amdgpu"
  Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
  Attached to: #21 (PCI bridge)

Primary display adapter: #15

Seems your laptop has two graphics cards. Nvidia and AMD. What is the output of mhwd -li

The output of mhwd -li is

> Installed PCI configs:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  NAME               VERSION          FREEDRIVER           TYPE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
           video-linux            2018.05.04                true            PCI
video-hybrid-amd-nvidia-prime            2021.12.18               false            PCI


Warning: No installed USB configs!

My guess is that the package xbacklight is installed. To my experience it only works with intel GPU.

Your active GPU is nvidia.

My suggestion is to install the package acpilight and add yourself to the video group

sudo pacman -Syu acpilight
sudo gpasswd -a $USER video

Restart your system

I installed the acpilight package, added myself to the video group, restarted, and the issue still persists

That is strange - I remember this recipe to work in the past.

If you run this and you get a permission error

xbacklight -10

Then add a sudo drop in to allow it to run

echo "%wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:/usr/bin/xbacklight" | sudo tee -i /etc/sudoers.d/10-xbacklight

I ran xbacklight -10 and nothing happened—no change in brightness and no error message

Just to make sure I also ran

echo "%wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:/usr/bin/xbacklight" | sudo tee -i /etc/sudoers.d/10-xbacklight

But still no change in backlight and no error received

I have found a solution to this ongoing issue. I did some digging and found that the problem can be solved by installing Optimus-Manager, allowing one to choose which GPU to use on the fly.

I have switched over to endeavourOS but this package will work for Manjaro as well.

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