Turn off keyboard back-light Sony (VAIO SVF1521DCXW)

Solution 1:

Replacement for old and obsolete answer

Update (04/16/2015): Bug was reported, and is available here. Current bug status is:
status:CONFIRMEDPatch released, waiting for test/merge!
importance:MEDIUM
assigned to:UNASSIGNED

Through a chat with OP and corroboration from the Ubuntu Linux developers, this problem is a bug. As such, unless a member on AU is an official kernel developer (Jon Skeet maybe?), this bug can not be solved.

I think that this should be reported in the proper area, which is here.

For the bug title, place the name of the kernel module (sony-laptop) and a brief description of the bug ("Laptop Keyboard Backlight not turning off")

For the content, describe the bug in its entirety. Describe what works and what doesn't. Also include the following resources:

• This page. It contains information on what you tried so far.
• The chat. This contains debugging info and some more things tried. The devs can sort through this.
• The Patch(es). If a patch can be found (it was in this situation), make sure to include it. It will save the devs TONS of time. And, your bug gets solved faster.

Also, bugs are (usually) handled in order of importance. Make your bug sound important, but don't exaggerate.

When your bug is solved, BE HAPPY! You just made it into the Official Linux Kernel changelog!

Also: Make sure to follow any instructions on the bug reporting page. The more stuff you give the devs, the easier their jobs are, and the faster your bug is solved.

Old Post:
Try downloading the Vaio Control Center from SourceForge.

To install it, run the following steps:

1. Open a terminal
2. cd ~/Downloads
3. mkdir ~/.VCC
4. mv vaio-control-center-0.1.tar.bz2 ~/.VCC
5. cd ~/.VCC
6. tar -xjvf vaio-control-center-0.1.tar.bz2
7. make -j12
8. chmod +x vaio-control-center
9. ./vaio-control-center

If you want, you can create a link to the control center onto your desktop. Simply make a .desktop entry pointing to ~/.VCC/vaio-control-center.

Once you are in the app, look for a backlight options menu and try adjusting that.

Note: For this to work, you MUST have QT Core and QT Dev installed!

Edit (inspired by comment by MGodby): Make sure you have qt4-qmake installed. Also make sure that the conf-file is in /usr/share/qt/mkspecs/linux-g++-64/qmake.conf. If need be, make a symlink to the proper location.

On a slightly unrelated note, have you tried using modprobe with sony-laptop instead of sony_laptop?

On a slightly less unrelated note, have you tried updating to the latest kernel?