Re: [PATCH v6 0/7] HID: asus: Fix ASUS ROG Laptop's Keyboard backlight handling

[Denis Benato <benato.denis96@gmail.com>]

On 10/16/25 14:28, Antheas Kapenekakis wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Oct 2025 at 14:19, Denis Benato <benato.denis96@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 10/16/25 14:14, Antheas Kapenekakis wrote:
>>> On Thu, 16 Oct 2025 at 13:57, Denis Benato <benato.denis96@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On 10/13/25 22:15, Antheas Kapenekakis wrote:
>>>>> This is a two part series which does the following:
>>>>>   - Clean-up init sequence
>>>>>   - Unify backlight handling to happen under asus-wmi so that all Aura
>>>>>     devices have synced brightness controls and the backlight button works
>>>>>     properly when it is on a USB laptop keyboard instead of one w/ WMI.
>>>>>
>>>>> For more context, see cover letter of V1. Since V5, I removed some patches
>>>>> to make this easier to merge.
>>>>>
>>>>> All comments with these patches had been addressed since V4.
>>>> I have loaded this patchset for users of asus-linux project to try out.
>>>>
>>>> One of them opened a bug report about a kernel bug that happens
>>>> consistently when closing the lid of his laptop [1].
>>>>
>>>> He also sent another piece of kernel log, but didn't specify anything more
>>>> about this [2].
>>>>
>>>> [1] https://pastebin.com/akZx1w10
>>>> [2] https://pastebin.com/sKdczPgf
>>> Can you provide a link to the bug report? [2] seems unrelated.
>> The log in [2] was posted without additional context in the same
>> discord message as [1].
> Link me the kernel sources. Is it linux-g14 in the AUR?
Someone has replicated it on the AUR but it's just an out-of-sync replica.

The true source code is here:
https://gitlab.com/asus-linux/linux-g14 branch 6.17
>> I think I will tell the user to open a proper bug report because
>> I do agree on the fact that it's looking unrelated.
>>> As for [1], it looks like a trace that stems from a sysfs write to
>>> brightness stemming from userspace that follows the same chain it
>>> would on a stock kernel and times out. Is it present on a stock
>>> kernel?
>> I have asked more details to the user. The user is not online ATM
>> so I will get to you with more details when I can.
>>> Ilpo should know more about this, could the spinlock be interfering?
>>> My testing on devices that have WMI led controls is a bit limited
>>> unfortunately. However, most of our asus users have been happy with
>>> this series for around half a year now.
>> Unless they have looked to kernel logs they won't be able to tell
>> since apparently there are no visible consequences.
>>> Antheas
>>>
>>>>> ---
>>>>> V5: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250325184601.10990-1-lkml@antheas.dev/
>>>>> V4: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250324210151.6042-1-lkml@antheas.dev/
>>>>> V3: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250322102804.418000-1-lkml@antheas.dev/
>>>>> V2: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250320220924.5023-1-lkml@antheas.dev/
>>>>> V1: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250319191320.10092-1-lkml@antheas.dev/
>>>>>
>>>>> Changes since V5:
>>>>>   - It's been a long time
>>>>>   - Remove addition of RGB as that had some comments I need to work on
>>>>>   - Remove folio patch (already merged)
>>>>>   - Remove legacy fix patch 11 from V4. There is a small chance that
>>>>>     without this patch, some old NKEY keyboards might not respond to
>>>>>     RGB commands according to Luke, but the kernel driver does not do
>>>>>     RGB currently. The 0x5d init is done by Armoury crate software in
>>>>>     Windows. If an issue is found, we can re-add it or just remove patches
>>>>>     1/2 before merging. However, init could use the cleanup.
>>>>>
>>>>> Changes since V4:
>>>>>   - Fix KConfig (reported by kernel robot)
>>>>>   - Fix Ilpo's nits, if I missed anything lmk
>>>>>
>>>>> Changes since V3:
>>>>>   - Add initializer for 0x5d for old NKEY keyboards until it is verified
>>>>>     that it is not needed for their media keys to function.
>>>>>   - Cover init in asus-wmi with spinlock as per Hans
>>>>>   - If asus-wmi registers WMI handler with brightness, init the brightness
>>>>>     in USB Asus keyboards, per Hans.
>>>>>   - Change hid handler name to asus-UNIQ:rgb:peripheral to match led class
>>>>>   - Fix oops when unregistering asus-wmi by moving unregister outside of
>>>>>     the spin lock (but after the asus reference is set to null)
>>>>>
>>>>> Changes since V2:
>>>>>   - Check lazy init succeds in asus-wmi before setting register variable
>>>>>   - make explicit check in asus_hid_register_listener for listener existing
>>>>>     to avoid re-init
>>>>>   - rename asus_brt to asus_hid in most places and harmonize everything
>>>>>   - switch to a spinlock instead of a mutex to avoid kernel ooops
>>>>>   - fixup hid device quirks to avoid multiple RGB devices while still exposing
>>>>>     all input vendor devices. This includes moving rgb init to probe
>>>>>     instead of the input_configured callbacks.
>>>>>   - Remove fan key (during retest it appears to be 0xae that is already
>>>>>     supported by hid-asus)
>>>>>   - Never unregister asus::kbd_backlight while asus-wmi is active, as that
>>>>>   - removes fds from userspace and breaks backlight functionality. All
>>>>>   - current mainline drivers do not support backlight hotplugging, so most
>>>>>     userspace software (e.g., KDE, UPower) is built with that assumption.
>>>>>     For the Ally, since it disconnects its controller during sleep, this
>>>>>     caused the backlight slider to not work in KDE.
>>>>>
>>>>> Changes since V1:
>>>>>   - Add basic RGB support on hid-asus, (Z13/Ally) tested in KDE/Z13
>>>>>   - Fix ifdef else having an invalid signature (reported by kernel robot)
>>>>>   - Restore input arguments to init and keyboard function so they can
>>>>>     be re-used for RGB controls.
>>>>>   - Remove Z13 delay (it did not work to fix the touchpad) and replace it
>>>>>     with a HID_GROUP_GENERIC quirk to allow hid-multitouch to load. Squash
>>>>>     keyboard rename into it.
>>>>>   - Unregister brightness listener before removing work queue to avoid
>>>>>     a race condition causing corruption
>>>>>   - Remove spurious mutex unlock in asus_brt_event
>>>>>   - Place mutex lock in kbd_led_set after LED_UNREGISTERING check to avoid
>>>>>     relocking the mutex and causing a deadlock when unregistering leds
>>>>>   - Add extra check during unregistering to avoid calling unregister when
>>>>>     no led device is registered.
>>>>>   - Temporarily HID_QUIRK_INPUT_PER_APP from the ROG endpoint as it causes
>>>>>     the driver to create 4 RGB handlers per device. I also suspect some
>>>>>     extra events sneak through (KDE had the @@@@@@).
>>>>>
>>>>> Antheas Kapenekakis (7):
>>>>>   HID: asus: refactor init sequence per spec
>>>>>   HID: asus: prevent binding to all HID devices on ROG
>>>>>   platform/x86: asus-wmi: Add support for multiple kbd RGB handlers
>>>>>   HID: asus: listen to the asus-wmi brightness device instead of
>>>>>     creating one
>>>>>   platform/x86: asus-wmi: remove unused keyboard backlight quirk
>>>>>   platform/x86: asus-wmi: add keyboard brightness event handler
>>>>>   HID: asus: add support for the asus-wmi brightness handler
>>>>>
>>>>>  drivers/hid/hid-asus.c                     | 235 +++++++++++----------
>>>>>  drivers/platform/x86/asus-wmi.c            | 157 ++++++++++++--
>>>>>  include/linux/platform_data/x86/asus-wmi.h |  69 +++---
>>>>>  3 files changed, 291 insertions(+), 170 deletions(-)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> base-commit: 3a8660878839faadb4f1a6dd72c3179c1df56787