Developer traces HP laptop mute LED bug from Reddit hack to upstream kernel fix

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A software developer discovered that the mute LED on their HP Omen 16-wd0xxx laptop failed to illuminate under Linux, despite audio muting correctly and the LED working normally on Windows. Initial investigation using evtest and /sys/class/leds/ ruled out hardware failure and pointed to a missing driver-level signal. A Reddit workaround involving direct hex writes to Realtek ALC245 codec registers resolved the symptom, but the developer found the approach unsatisfying for a problem likely already solved upstream. By cross-referencing the laptop's PCI subsystem ID against entries in the kernel's alc269.c quirk table, they identified and verified the correct fixup — ALC245_FIXUP_HP_MUTE_LED_V1_COEFBIT — through manual codec register testing. The fix was subsequently merged upstream and later proved useful in diagnosing the identical bug on a different user's laptop.

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