[vox-tech] help with xorg.conf

[Wes Hardaker]

>>>>> On Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:42:19 -0700, Thomas Johnston <trjohnston at ucdavis.edu> said:

TJ> The problem I am having now, is that I can no longer get it to work
TJ> (well) with my external monitor at home now.  I have spent many hours
TJ> trying to get functionality restored.  It seems that the more I try to
TJ> get things to work, the worse the problem gets.  The advice of
TJ> websites such as:

The more recent versions of X seem to have you needing to use xrandr to
do external monitor configuration.

I believe this is what more recent versions of the gnome and KDE configs
do too.  I long time ago I had my multiple screens configured in my
xorg.conf file, but no longer because that stopped working as of "um, a
few revisions of fedora ago".

So now I do this:

   Section "Module"
     ...
     Load  "randr"
   EndSection

   Section "Screen"
      ...
      SubSection "Display"
                   Virtual   2704 1050
                   ...
      EndSubSection
   EndSection

I have multiple monitors listed and multiple screens defined too, but I
actually don't think they do anything.

Instead I have a dynamic run-time xinit script in
/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/45-custom_xrandr-settings.sh that does this:

  #!/bin/sh


  xrandr |grep VGA-0 | grep " connected "
  if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
      xrandr --output VGA-0 --off
      xrandr --output VGA-0 --auto --pos 0x0 --output LVDS --auto --pos 1280x140
      #xrandr --output VGA-0 --auto --pos 0x0 --output LVDS --auto --pos 1680x0
  fi

Which basically detects if a VGA is attached to my laptop and if so then
runs xrandr (before the rest of KDE gets going) as I log in.  The --pos
line is based on where my laptop sits to the the right and slightly down
from the larger LCD.  One line is commented out because I switch back
and forth sometimes between different external monitors.

This all works, but I'd hardly call it ideal.  The good news is that it
works perfectly till I need to change something.  If I log in without a
monitor connected, I get a single screen.  If I log in with a monitor
connected I get a dual-head.  Yay!  Until I attach to a monitor of a
different size.  Then booooo....

-- 
\ Wes Hardaker                           http://pontifications.hardakers.net /
 \_____ "In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than ________/
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