Dual monitor support suddenly broken.

[pnunn]

Hi Guys,

been chugging along happily for quite a while with my laptop system, but have hit a road bump now. I put the system to sleep last night with everything working, opened the lid this morning to face two blank screens.

I eventually worked out that by unplugging the display port monitor I could get the laptop monitor to show up (this is after mucking around in text mode for a while restarting x and plasma desktop etc.

Seems that when I glug in the second monitor, the screen on the laptop goes dark first briefly, then just goes black. The second monitor seems to turn on its backlight, but nothing is displayed.

I can see in the logs that xrandr is detecting the monitor being plugged in and removed so that's not it..

When I try and run xrandr from the command line text screen it won't do anything because it can't detect a display.

Any ideas how to sort this one?? I'm guessing a recent update has buggered it up.

Peter.

Further information... after mucking around with some saved xorg.conf's on the system I think the issue is with Xinerama.

When I try and startx from the console, I get a whole bunch of successful messages until it gets to the xinerama one, then it says

Loading extension XINERAMA
set version 1.4 failed

Oddly its till says this on the single montitor setup, yet the monitor stays live... sigh.

Thanks.

Still more info. The monitor fires up on the hdmi cable (all be it at a lower than optimal resolution) but both monitors work so it seems to be related to the display port somehow. The monitor has the same resolution as the laptop monitor on the hdmi, not the much higher resolution it should have.

And agian more.. rolled back from the xorg-egders repo. Re-inststalled the stardard nvidia driver.. and still nothing when the display port adapter is plugged in.

More Information again..

I managed to get the dp working again by plugging in the dvi connector along with the dp. The monitor then came up on the dvi (at the same lower resolution as the hdmi. I turned off this monitor in the nvidia-control app, and enabled the dp monitor and its now working. However, as soon as I unplug the dvi cable, both screens go blank again.

The Xorg.conf file saved by this setup is

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "X.org Configured"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
Screen 1 "Screen1" RightOf "Screen0"
Screen 2 "Screen2" RightOf "Screen1"
Screen 3 "Screen3" RightOf "Screen2"
Screen 4 "Screen4" RightOf "Screen3"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi"
FontPath "built-ins"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Monitor Model"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor1"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Monitor Model"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor2"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Monitor Model"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor3"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Monitor Model"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor4"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Monitor Model"
EndSection

Section "Device"
### Available Driver options are:-
### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz",
### <percent>: "<f>%"
### [arg]: arg optional
#Option "SWcursor" # [<bool>]
#Option "kmsdev" # <str>
#Option "ShadowFB" # [<bool>]
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "modesetting"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
### Available Driver options are:-
### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz",
### <percent>: "<f>%"
### [arg]: arg optional
#Option "SWcursor" # [<bool>]
#Option "HWcursor" # [<bool>]
#Option "NoAccel" # [<bool>]
#Option "ShadowFB" # [<bool>]
#Option "VideoKey" # <i>
#Option "WrappedFB" # [<bool>]
#Option "GLXVBlank" # [<bool>]
#Option "ZaphodHeads" # <str>
#Option "PageFlip" # [<bool>]
#Option "SwapLimit" # <i>
#Option "AsyncUTSDFS" # [<bool>]
Identifier "Card1"
Driver "nouveau"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Card2"
Driver "nvidia"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
### Available Driver options are:-
### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz",
### <percent>: "<f>%"
### [arg]: arg optional
#Option "ShadowFB" # [<bool>]
#Option "Rotate" # <str>
#Option "fbdev" # <str>
#Option "debug" # [<bool>]
Identifier "Card3"
Driver "fbdev"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
### Available Driver options are:-
### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz",
### <percent>: "<f>%"
### [arg]: arg optional
#Option "ShadowFB" # [<bool>]
#Option "DefaultRefresh" # [<bool>]
#Option "ModeSetClearScreen" # [<bool>]
Identifier "Card4"
Driver "vesa"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 1
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 4
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 8
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 15
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen1"
Device "Card1"
Monitor "Monitor1"
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 1
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 4
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 8
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 15
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen2"
Device "Card2"
Monitor "Monitor2"
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 1
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 4
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 8
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 15
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen3"
Device "Card3"
Monitor "Monitor3"
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 1
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 4
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 8
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 15
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen4"
Device "Card4"
Monitor "Monitor4"
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 1
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 4
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 8
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 15
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Which seems to indicate that it thinks there are 4 screens attached??

Any ideas?

P.

[Teunis]

There are 4 screens in it...
I would rename xorg.conf and see how it boots into a fresh one.

[pnunn]

Thanks Teunis. Turns out that removing xorg.conf did not fix the issue, but removing .kde did. I have no idea what it is in .kde that caused the problem, but it seems that nvidia have changed the way they do multi monitor support in the nvidia-settings control which may explain it. Now both monitors are set to a different screen and then Xinerama can be enabled (previously you just enabled Xinerama and it took care of the screens for you). I don't know if this is what caused the problem but it could be.

The only issue is that I now have a panel across the bottom of the second screen that I didn't have before that mirrors what is going on with the primary one. I've not been game to remove it yet.

But, both monitors now working without the dvi cable plugged in.

[Teunis]

Good to see things are working.
.kde does keep a lot of mysterious configs

I run nVidia with two monitors and for many years I have not needed xinerama.
As a matter of fact, the only reason I do need an xorg.conf is to enable the screen brightness controls.