How to get Multimedia keys working at my ASUS N56VZ Ubuntu 12.04 Notebook

I don't get my multimedia keys (FN Keys) working. The Notebook is a ASUS N56VZ.

If I normally press the multimedia key combinations, nothing happens. If I try to get the keycodes while pressing, for e. g., Fn+F8 (this should turn volume up) with xev or acpi_listen started, there is no output at all. Only the Fn+F1 (Standby) and the Fn+F2 (Wireless on/off) combinations are working, but also, there is no output at xev or acpi_listen, while doing this.

What can I do here?

Solution 1:

I also have an Asus N56VZ.

Good news, you can have nearly all the Fn keys to work (all except the screen backlight control keys, don't know why)

Bad news, for the moment, you will have to wait for kernel 3.5 release or to modify source code according to what you can see here if you cannot wait.

UPDATE 11/19/2012

Good news, most of the Fn keys work out of the box since Ubuntu 12.10.

Another good news ! For the reluctant screen backlight control keys (F5 and F6), I have found this procedure. It originaly has been written for the Asus Zenbook Prime, but it works like a charm with the N56VZ.

UPDATE 04/07/2013

I recently upgraded my firmware to version 2.16. Unluckily, the fixasusbacklight workaround seems inefficient with this version. The screen backlight Fn+F5/F6 keys are no longer working. Anyway, this situation should be fixed by the end of the month with the release of Ubuntu 13.04. I have just tested the beta Live CD and everything works fine with it.

Solution 2:

According to Asus, this maybe an issue with the BIOS. They also said that according to responses from the BIOS team, the calling method of wmi evaluate method, returns ASUS_WMI_UNSUPPORTED_METHOD in new ASUS laptop PCs. This patch fixes it.¹

As fossfreedom said, there are a couple of recent BIOS updates for your laptop. You need to make sure that your BIOS is up to date before attempting this fix.

I shared this file on dropbox, because I couldn't find it anywhere that doesn't require you to have a user name and a password.

So first you need to download the file asus-wmi-dkms_0.2_all.deb. Once you do that, just press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, navigate to the folder where the file got downloaded, probably the Downloads folder, and then run the commands below.

sudo apt-get install dkms
sudo dpkg -i asus-wmi-dkms_0.2_all.deb

I hope that this works for you.

Click here to download the file

^{1Source:Asus VIP Tech Support}

P.S. Let me know if this works. Because if it doesn't I need to let Asus VIP support know. Thanks

Solution 3:

I have an ASUS N56VZ too.

To get the Fn Key to work I installed the kernel 3.5.3, everything but the Screen Brightness works perfectly. I'm pretty sure a kernel update is not necessary, if you update the module asus_wb_wmi will be enough I guess.

Other thing that is working now with this kernel is the Wifi led that wasn't working before.