[gpm] brightness on Sony Vaio Laptop

[Eli Dayan <edayan optonline net>]

Hello all,

This is my first post to the list.  I have recently purchased a Sony 
Vaio Laptop model #VGN-NR220E and have fresh-installed a copy of ubuntu 
7.10 onto it.  Gnome Power Manager loads on login, of course, and I have 
tested both suspend and hibernate, and they both work as well.  What 
does not work is anything relating to the setting of screen brightness, 
both in Power Management Settings, or if I add a screen brightness 
control to the panel.  It is my understanding that this is an issue with 
Sony hardware itself (brightness keys on the keyboard do not work 
either), however, I have been successfully able to change the screen's 
brightness using xbacklight.  Any thoughts on having Gnome Power Manager 
use xbacklight in a case like this?  I have never written any code 
specifically for Gnome, but I would be interested to work on this.  It 
would certainly be very helpful to the many Vaio users who are having 
problems with screen brightness.  Thank you all for your time.

Ubuntu 7.10 (installed from LiveCD)
GNOME Power Manager 2.20
Kernel 2.6.22-14

Eli Dayan