Brightness control doesn't seem to work on a Toshiba Satellite M115 laptop

I have Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on a Toshiba Satellite M115 laptop. The brightness control doesn't seem to work with the "brightness and lock" setting or fn+f6 and fn+f7 (which usually works in Windows). How can I adjust the brightness and/or access different power settings, so my computer isn't running on full power all the time?

I am not familiar with your particular model, but you can try some of these 'solutions'.

Add acpi_backlight=vendor to grub:

Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and type:

gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub

You will find this line in the new opened window:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

Change it to:

Example:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_backlight=vendor"

Note your entry may be different - only add the acpi_backlight=vendor.

After doing that, do:

sudo update-grub

If that does not get the Fn+F6 and Fn+F7 keys working, you can do this via the system settings as seen below:

I resolved my own issue by updating my BIOS. I did this by entering my model of Toshiba at http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/support/ and downloading the latest BIOS. Be sure to read all documentation that comes with the download before updating. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs says "Outdated and buggy BIOS firmware is a common cause of a variety of hardware issues (ex. intermittent wireless, suspend not working, and certain keys on keyboard not working correctly, kernel panics after plugging USB drive in)."

Worked for Toshiba Satellite L-750

open unity search and type "additional drivers" select: using NVIDIA binary driver -version .... apply changes and reboot