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 14:14, 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].

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