Here's my situation:

I recently purchased a Sager NP9170 (same as the Clevo P170EM) and it has a multi-colored, backlit keyboard. Under Windows 7, you can launch an app that allows you to change the color of the backlighting to any of a handful of colors (blue, green, red, etc).

I want that same functionality under Linux. I haven't been able to find any software that does this, so I guess I'm going to have to write it myself. I'm a programmer by trade, but I've haven't done much low level programming, and I've certainly never written a device driver, so I was wondering if anyone could answer these two questions:

1) Is there any software already out there that does this sort of thing? I've looked fairly thoroughly but haven't found anything applicable.

2) Where would I start in trying to reverse engineer this sort of thing? Any useful articles, tutorials, books that might help?

And just to clarify: The backlighting already works, that's not the problem. I just want to be able to change the color of the backlighting. This functionality is supported by the hardware. The laptop came with windows software that does this and I want the same functionality in Linux. I am willing to write this software myself, I just want to know the best way to go about it.

Thanks!