Beta 2 display issues

[ubersoft]

Short version: I put this on my tiny laptop first to test it out, and found (to my delight) that it actually fixed two very persistently annoying bugs in 12.10 (specifically a nasty issue with Inkscape that caused it to crash when using a mouse with the touchpad disabled, and an issue where the kernel would not recognize Logitech mice using a unified wireless receiver). So I decided to upgrade on my big laptop. It's a risk but mitigated, since my tiny laptop is perfectly functional with Raring beta 2 and I have all my work backed up all over the place.

Big laptop has a problem with the display that I'm not sure how to fix, I wondered if maybe y'all could give me some pointers.

Big laptop uses nvidia drivers which are currently a) disabled and b) not installable on Raring. This isn't surprising, usually the proprietary drivers don't start working until a release is actually released and all the libraries are properly in sync, etc. So it is currently defaulting to the nouveau drivers, as far as I can tell. But here are the issues:

- When my laptop with the 17" 1920x1080 screen is also plugged in to an older external LCD monitor (1280x1024), the display assumes the external monitor is the ONLY MONITOR PRESENT. The new monitor configuration tool only recognizes that one and the laptop's display won't even activate.

- When the external monitor is unplugged, the laptop screen thinks it is that monitor. The highest resolution it will display at is 1280x1024, which looks weird on the screen.

Is there some way to force Kubuntu to rediscover the existing display and run through monitor configuration again? Has anyone tried to use the multiple monitor tool they added to Kubuntu this time around successfully, and are there any tricks to it?

Thanks in advance.

[oshunluvr]

I'm using a desktop, but I had no trouble installing and using the nvidia drivers, so that trouble is likely coming from elsewhere. You need the kernel headers and dkms installed to activate the nvidia driver, but I can't imagine why you couldn't install them though.

The other tool that might help is xrandr. In the past I've seen some scripts that even allow automatic display detection and resolution setting when a new monitor is plugged in, but I don't use it myself.

Here's something I just found: http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=19310

It looks like it uses xrandr and a script to do what you're asking for. Sorry I can't be more help.

[andystmartin]

There seems to be a missing version.h file in the linux include files which is keeping the dkms system from compiling the nvidia modules. I copied the version.h file into place under /usr/src/linux-headers-3.8.0-17-generic and successfully installed the 310 nvidia drivers.

xrandr is a nifty tool that I use to choose the "main" screen and best resolution for using my laptop with external monitors at work and at home. My home and work monitors have different resolutions. However, the nvidia drivers do not fully support all xrandr operations. Things are good, but not perfect. I have a script, that runs when I log in, to check what monitors are attached to the laptop and sets my main screen to the one with the best resolution.

[oshunluvr]

However, the nvidia drivers do not fully support all xrandr operations.

Could you explain what this means? Specifically, what does xrandr do that the nvidia driver does not support?

[Teunis]

An unusual story, I use nVidia for several years on Toshiba and Lenovo computers and it always worked better than the nouveau versions.
A few times there was a version with problems but there has always been at least 1 other versions available.
I would suggest you try the four(!) versions available right now.

[ubersoft]

Switched over to nouveau for now. It's a lot more useful than it was a few releases back.