11:21 a.m.
A software developer gets a new HDMI monitor to connect to his laptop .. he
connects the HDMI output to the laptop .. no notification, nothing pops up
.. mmm .. he searches through the menus for something .. Screen resize n
rotate (krandrtray) looks promising ... he plays with it, it gets the 2
monitors mirrored, but he wants to spread the desktop on them both, tens of
clicks here and there .. it's not going anywhere ... he calls the local
linux guru, which happens to be me. I play with krandr too, nothing .. I
appologize for having to use cli tricks, I open up konsole, and fire-up
xrandr, after some time to get the 11 word xrandr command just about right
... Xrandr fails to set the display and bitches about some virtual-size
thingie .. googling reveals I need "Virtual" directive in xorg.conf .. mm ..
ok, I vim xorg.conf .. but it's not there ... ah, everything in newer fedora
should be automatic, heh, I remember. Ok .. so I need to create an xorg.conf
.. I launch system-config-display .. set the dual-head option there (how
didnt I think of that one before) .. couple of clicks .. save the config ..
oops, some "index out of range" error spits on the konsole screen and the
tool just hangs there .. no error messages that there were some errors
saving, nothing ... ick ... xorg.conf was not created! I give
system-config-display another shot .. it crashes the exact way again ... doh
.. (at this stage I should already be cursing .. but I'm not :) I launch
system-config-display one third time with --no-ui option to create some
boiler plate xorg.conf, this time it works .. I add the needed "Virtual"
thingie ... I set it to 4096x4096 .. restart X .. it fails to start
completely ... no graceful recovery :/ I reboot the box ... X doesn't start
again .. no errors .. doesn't take me back to console .. just a pretty black
blank screen! Reboot again, runlevel 3 .. tweak Virtual .. init 5 .. X
starts. I finally login .. run "xrandr" and tweak the command .. now things
start to look good again. I make the user a shell alias, tell him to type it
whenever that monitor is attached to his laptop ... end of my story!
Does something as common as attaching an extra monitor to a laptop, require
that much voodoo ..! How would a "normal" user react ! I wont try to mention
how to resolve the problems mentioned here, since you guys know this better
than I do ... I'm not whining either, I'm simple mentioning somthing is
definitely wrong, with the hope of spurring action to make things better
Regards
1:13 p.m.
Amount of voodoo depends on graphics driver. With radeons even single
screen setup can be major PITA
2009/3/1 Ahmed Kamal <email.ahmedkamal(a)googlemail.com>:
A software developer gets a new HDMI monitor to connect to his laptop
.. he
connects the HDMI output to the laptop .. no notification, nothing pops up
.. mmm .. he searches through the menus for something .. Screen resize n
rotate (krandrtray) looks promising ... he plays with it, it gets the 2
monitors mirrored, but he wants to spread the desktop on them both, tens of
clicks here and there .. it's not going anywhere ... he calls the local
linux guru, which happens to be me. I play with krandr too, nothing .. I
appologize for having to use cli tricks, I open up konsole, and fire-up
xrandr, after some time to get the 11 word xrandr command just about right
... Xrandr fails to set the display and bitches about some virtual-size
thingie .. googling reveals I need "Virtual" directive in xorg.conf .. mm ..
ok, I vim xorg.conf .. but it's not there ... ah, everything in newer fedora
should be automatic, heh, I remember. Ok .. so I need to create an xorg.conf
.. I launch system-config-display .. set the dual-head option there (how
didnt I think of that one before) .. couple of clicks .. save the config ..
oops, some "index out of range" error spits on the konsole screen and the
tool just hangs there .. no error messages that there were some errors
saving, nothing ... ick ... xorg.conf was not created! I give
system-config-display another shot .. it crashes the exact way again ... doh
.. (at this stage I should already be cursing .. but I'm not :) I launch
system-config-display one third time with --no-ui option to create some
boiler plate xorg.conf, this time it works .. I add the needed "Virtual"
thingie ... I set it to 4096x4096 .. restart X .. it fails to start
completely ... no graceful recovery :/ I reboot the box ... X doesn't start
again .. no errors .. doesn't take me back to console .. just a pretty black
blank screen! Reboot again, runlevel 3 .. tweak Virtual .. init 5 .. X
starts. I finally login .. run "xrandr" and tweak the command .. now things
start to look good again. I make the user a shell alias, tell him to type it
whenever that monitor is attached to his laptop ... end of my story!
Does something as common as attaching an extra monitor to a laptop, require
that much voodoo ..! How would a "normal" user react ! I wont try to mention
how to resolve the problems mentioned here, since you guys know this better
than I do ... I'm not whining either, I'm simple mentioning somthing is
definitely wrong, with the hope of spurring action to make things better
Regards
--
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https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
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http://scwlab.com
6:07 p.m.
On Sun, 2009-03-01 at 19:21 +0200, Ahmed Kamal wrote:
Does something as common as attaching an extra monitor to a laptop,
require that much voodoo ..! How would a "normal" user react ! I wont
try to mention how to resolve the problems mentioned here, since you
guys know this better than I do ... I'm not whining either, I'm simple
mentioning somthing is definitely wrong, with the hope of spurring
action to make things better
krandrtray is fairly rubbish. The best UI to use is
gnome-display-properties, which handles it very well.
The issue with having to set Virtual is that the intel driver can't yet
dynamically re-allocate the framebuffer to accommodate a growing
display. Theoretically we could default to a huge framebuffer, but
there's two problems with that - above 2048 pixels in either axis, 3D
acceleration stops working, and also, the bigger the framebuffer, the
more RAM it uses, so if you set a 2048x2048 framebuffer on a 1024x480
display (hint: netbooks have small screens and not much RAM) you're
wasting about 45MB of RAM.
The Intel driver devs (who are reading this, I'm sure, and apologies in
advance for the jab, guys) have been promising dynamic reallocation of
the framebuffer Real Soon Now for a while ;). I think the last I was
told is that it's part of the whole GEM thing that's being worked on
now. Once that's sorted, it will all work without any messing about
required, you'll just be able to run gnome-display-properties and
re-arrange the screens however you like.
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net
10:19 a.m.
>>>> "AW" == Adam Williamson
<awilliam(a)redhat.com> writes:
AW> The Intel driver devs (who are reading this, I'm sure, and
AW> apologies in advance for the jab, guys) have been promising
AW> dynamic reallocation of the framebuffer Real Soon Now for a while
AW> ;).
And they've already delivered, although the new driver is not yet in
rawhide as I believe it has some rather significant bugs.
- J<
1:39 p.m.
On Tue, 2009-03-03 at 10:19 -0600, Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
>>>>> "AW" == Adam Williamson
<awilliam(a)redhat.com> writes:
AW> The Intel driver devs (who are reading this, I'm sure, and
AW> apologies in advance for the jab, guys) have been promising
AW> dynamic reallocation of the framebuffer Real Soon Now for a while
AW> ;).
And they've already delivered, although the new driver is not yet in
rawhide as I believe it has some rather significant bugs.
Thanks for the heads-up - wasn't aware the code was available already.
I'll have to track it down and try it out before I sell off my
intel-supported laptop...
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net
1:49 p.m.
>>>> "AW" == Adam Williamson
<awilliam(a)redhat.com> writes:
AW> Thanks for the heads-up - wasn't aware the code was available
AW> already.
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2009-February/044003.html
Unless I'm just completely wrong about what dynamic front buffer
allocation refers to, that is. However, due to bugs you really want
to get 2.6.3 which was very recently released.
- J<
1:59 p.m.
On Tue, 2009-03-03 at 13:49 -0600, Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
>>>>> "AW" == Adam Williamson
<awilliam(a)redhat.com> writes:
AW> Thanks for the heads-up - wasn't aware the code was available
AW> already.
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2009-February/044003.html
Unless I'm just completely wrong about what dynamic front buffer
allocation refers to, that is. However, due to bugs you really want
to get 2.6.3 which was very recently released.
Nope, I'm pretty sure you're right and that should be it. Thanks again.
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net
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6 comments
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participants (4)
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Adam Williamson -
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Jason L Tibbitts III -
Pavel Shevchuk