This is a guide to fix Acer Chromebook 516 GE/ Plus 516 GE Chromebooks with RGB keyboard issues after installing/dual booting Linux.
Mods: Chrultrabook doesn’t allow text posts in their subreddit and this guide could help someone so please don’t remove it. Thanks! - Unheard_Peace
This was done on Ubuntu MATE, if you are using a similar OS and have a similar Chromebook with keyboard light issues, I presume this will work as well.
This is also not my code, I did not discover this. I am merely adding it to the internet since I and a number of people have had issues with this in the past (maybe it’s fixed now, IDK)
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Open terminal and run the following
chmod +x ectool
sudo mv ectool /usr/local/bin/ectool
2\. Pick a color
Deep Blue - 255
Bright Red - 16711680
Emerald Green - 65280
Pure White - 16777215
Ice Blue - 65535
Hot Pink - 16711935
Yellow - 16776960
Orange - 16744192
Purple - 8388736
It uses standard RGB so any string of numbers up to 9 characters will give different colors I think.
For my example I use the Deep Blue.
Use this command with the color you pick
sudo ectool rgbkbd clear 255
It should be working. Now you’ll want to set it up so that: 1 - It auto-runs on launch. 2 - It doesn’t ask for a password every time you cycle the computer.
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Setup a auto-run command. For Ubuntu MATE, you search Startup Application, then click the plus icon. Name it whatever you want, (I named mine Keyboard RGB Blue), add the command for you color you want (I used the blue obviously) Add a comment if you’d like, then add it. Save if your menu has a save option. (Mine saved with the add icon)
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In terminal run
sudo visudo
scroll to the bottom of the text file (In NANO, you scroll with Up/Down arrow keys) and add this
USER ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/local/bin/ectool
Replace USER with your case sensitive username, save and close the file, (for NANO, it’s Ctrl + O to save, Ctrl + X to exit)
And there ya go.
Zones: The Acer Chromebook 516 GE and Plus originally came with 4 zones. Unfortunately I believe that is only for Chrome OS, there aren’t 4 working zones in linux…there are 13. You can have 13 different colors on the keyboard.
To do this instead of the “clear” attribute i used in the earlier commands, you’d replace it with 0 for the first zone, 1 for the second zone, all the way to 12.
For example:
sudo ectool rgbkbd 6 255
This would set the 7th zone to the Deep Blue.
Then to have the separate zones run on startup, just add all the seperate zone commands as their own startup command.
WeirdTreeThing I believe has a easy-to-install pack for linux on chromebooks and it maps a lot of the keys to linux, and dimming is included with that. So if you have this pack installed, just hold down alt and use the brightness buttons to change the intensity.
I hope this helps someone. I’m sure if you have a Chromebook and have an issue with RGB keys and have Linux on it, this guide could help.