Experimental unofficial Linux platform driver module for ASUS TUF Gaming series laptops.

It is a backport of the asus-wmi / asus-nb-wmi drivers from the mainline + RGB backlight crudely cut-down to be useful for these laptops and packed as a DKMS module for 4.x / 5.x kernels.

How to decide if I should use it?

• If your machine does expose keyboard backlight as USB device (you see any devices with the ASUS vendor in output of lsusb) then this driver is not for you, check out CalcProgrammer1/OpenRGB, flukejones/rog-core, MidhunSureshR/openauranb or wroberts/rogauracore.
• If your laptop does not have RGB keyboard backlight and your kernel version is >= 5.3 - everything should work out of the box and there is no reason for you to be using this driver.
• If you either have RGB keyboard backlight that is managed via WMI, LTS kernel or you want to use features from mainline, you might want to consider trying this out.

This is highly experimental and controls the ACPI / WMI responsible for dangerous low-level hardware features (for instance thermal management). So the possibility exists that you could erase data, lock up the system, disable thermal management and set your laptop on fire or worse. So use at your own risk if you know what you are doing.

See "Contributing" section for other versions.

To check your exact model run

sudo dmidecode | less

and scroll down to check BIOS Information / Version (2nd column) and Base Board Information / Product name (1st column).

• Additional Fn-X Hotkeys
• Keyboard backlight intensity
• Color and mode control for RGB keyboard backlight
• Fan boost mode switching

icodelifee/TUF-Control
A Keyboard Lighting And Fan Mode Controller GUI App - awesome Electron-based frontend for this driver (WIP).

CalcProgrammer1/OpenRGB
Open source RGB lighting control that doesn't depend on manufacturer software - supports multiple RGB controllers, including this driver.

cromer/tuf-manager
The software includes 2 different user interfaces, CLI and GUI. It is written in Vala and uses GTK3 for the GUI.

How to: first disable old drivers, then proceed using make to test that it works at all, then install via DKMS permanently and enable on boot.

Create file /etc/modprobe.d/faustus.conf with the following contents and reboot the system.

blacklist asus_wmi
blacklist asus_nb_wmi

You could also try unloading the modules instead of reboot before proceeding by issuing:

sudo rmmod asus_nb_wmi
sudo rmmod asus_wmi

Some reports may suggest that you need to reboot after blacklisting, as the modules fail cleaning up on errors (do if you see AE_ALREADY_ACQUIRED in dmesg).

$ sudo apt-get install dkms

Compile and load the driver temporarily

$ make
$ sudo modprobe sparse-keymap
$ sudo modprobe wmi
$ sudo modprobe video
$ sudo insmod src/faustus.ko

and check dmesg | tail to verify the driver is loaded and no errors are present.

[ 8295.475755] faustus: DMI checK: FX505GM
[ 8295.476475] faustus: Initialization: 0x1
[ 8295.477057] faustus: BIOS WMI version: 8.1
[ 8295.477680] faustus: SFUN value: 0x4a0061
[ 8295.477687] faustus faustus: Use DSTS
[ 8295.477691] faustus faustus: Enable event queue
[ 8295.490603] input: Asus WMI hotkeys as /devices/platform/faustus/input/input34
[ 8295.492695] faustus: Number of fans: 1

If you see:

ERROR: could not insert module src/faustus.ko: No such device

it most likely means that your system is not in the "Systems" list above and not in the DMI table. This is not a bug and does not necessarily mean that the module does not work, but as there is no evidence that it does work on your system, it will fail fast with the above error message (see "Contributing" section below for bypassing the check if you feel adventurous).

Check that everything works, the system is stable. Also try unloading the driver with

$ sudo rmmod faustus

and inserting it back.

$ make dkms

The source code will probably be installed in /usr/src/faustus-<version>/ and the module itself will be compiled and installed in the current kernel module directory /lib/modules/.... It should also be automatically rebuilt when the kernel is upgraded.

Next, try to load the module

$ sudo modprobe faustus

To uninstall the DKMS module execute

$ sudo make dkmsclean

or

$ sudo dkms remove faustus/<version> --all

NOTE: The DKMS install does work with secure boot on Ubuntu 18.04.

On Ubuntu execute

$ sudo make onboot

or add it to your config files in the other way. Revert with

$ sudo make noboot

This is OS dependent, check the internet on how to do it right.

Is exposed via ledclass device /sys/class/leds/asus::kbd_backlight takes values 0 to 3. The driver changes brightness by itself when hotkeys are pressed.

TLDR: Run the ./set_rgb.sh script as root.

NOTE: The interface will most definitely switch to LED subsystem when submitted to mainline. This here is sort of hack.

Driver exposes sysfs attributes in /sys/devices/platform/faustus/kbbl/. You have to write all the parameters and then write 1 to kbbl_set to write them permanently or 2 to write them temporarily (the settings will reset on restart or hibernation).

The list of settings is:

• kbbl_red - red component in hex [00 - ff]
• kbbl_green - green component in hex [00 - ff]
• kbbl_blue - blue component in hex [00 - ff]
• kbbl_mode - mode:
  • 0 - static color
  • 1 - breathing
  • 2 - color cycle (the color component parameters have no effect)
  • 3 - strobe (epileptic mode, speed parameter has no effect)
• kbbl_speed - speed for modes 1 and 2:
  • 0 - slow
  • 1 - medium
  • 2 - fast
• kbbl_flags - enable flags (must be ORed to get the value), use 2a or ff to set all
  • 02 - on boot (before module load)
  • 08 - awake
  • 20 - sleep
  • 80? - should be logically shutdown, but I have genuinely no idea what it does
• kbbl_auraspeed - Speed of manual color cycling [0-99]
• kbbl_auramode - Set modes for aura hotkeys:

• 0 - manual color cycle
• 1 - mode of keyboard
• 2 - speed of keyboard mode
• 3 - saturation mode of manual color cycle

Is controlled by default by the driver itself when Fn-F5 is pressed switching three modes:

• 0 - normal
• 1 - overboost
• 2 - silent

There are two mode files available depending on the laptop model:

• /sys/devices/platform/faustus/fan_boost_mode
• /sys/devices/platform/faustus/throttle_thermal_policy.

In case if the throttle_thermal_policy is present, it has always all 3 modes available, whereas individual modes of fan_boost_mode may or may not be available. The mode will not be preserved on reboot or hibernation.

If you own a machine of this series from the table above it would be much appreciated if you test the driver and write your feedback (successful and otherwise) in an issue on GitHub.

If you machine of this series is not in the list, likely it is supported too. You can check the DSDT yourself and try loading the driver without DMI verification by passing let_it_burn=1:

sudo insmod ./src/faustus.ko let_it_burn=1

and send feedback if it works.

Always OS / kernel version and

$ sudo dmidecode | grep "BIOS Inf\|Board Inf" -A 3 
BIOS Information
	Vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
	Version: FX505GM.301
	Release Date: 09/21/2018
--
Base Board Information
	Manufacturer: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
	Product Name: FX505GM
	Version: 1.0

and additionally for a new model

$ sudo cat /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/DSDT > dsdt.aml

The patches are in fornext branch except for RGB backlight. This repository will provide usable DKMS version and will be maintained at least until it reaches stable Ubuntu version.

ASUS Trademark is either a US registered trademark or trademark of ASUSTeK Computer Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Reference to any ASUS products, services, processes, or other information and/or use of ASUS Trademarks does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship, or recommendation thereof by ASUS.

All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Moreover, ASUS does not participate, authorize, approve, sponsor, support or is affiliated with this project in any way, neither this project with ASUS.

The driver can turn on blinking lights on the laptop that might cause seizures.