Toshiba Notebooks: Set screen brightness on Linux commandline

Problem:

You own a Toshiba Notebook and want to set LCD backlight brightness using the commandline.

Solution

This can be done using the toshset command:

sudo toshset -inten <num>

Num is any integer between 1 and 7 where 7 is the brightest setting.

By default, you can only execute toshset as root because /dev/toshiba (the device toshset internally writes to) doesn’t have the correct permissions to allow normal users to write to it. You can automatically set the correct permissions on startup by adding

chmod o+w /dev/toshiba

to /etc/rc.local somewhere before the exit command.

Your kernel needs to be compiled with toshset driver support in order to be able to use toshset - most distribution kernerls support that feature. If /dev/toshiba exists on a Toshiba Notebook, your kernel supports toshset.