Arch Linux

btwxt

Member

Registered: 2009-12-14

Posts: 34

[SOLVED] Strange Dual-Head Background Image Issue

Good evening all,

Yesterday I did a long-delayed pacman -Syu that went very smoothly save for one tiny issue.  My dual-monitor background image is no longer stretching across the virtual screen.  Instead, the same image is scaled on both screens.  The issue isn't in my window manager (awesome3), because the same occurred in wmii.  Every background-setting application (feh, qiv, awsetbg) produces a similar result.  What's odd is that the 2 monitors are clearly shared as one screen.  Windows are easily split and moved between the two, and the mouse works as supposed to.  xrandr is fully functional.  It's as if all applications are seeing the virtual screen as they're supposed to, but background-setters are seeing 2 separate screens.

All of this is pointing at X, but where?

Here is my admittedly vanilla /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/30-dual-head.conf:

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "Monitor0"
    Option "PreferredMode" "1680x1050_60.00"
    HorizSync 31.5 - 82.3
    VertRefresh 56 - 75
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "Monitor1"
    Option "PreferredMode" "1680x1050_60.00"
    HorizSync 31.5 - 82.3
    VertRefresh 56 - 75
    Option "LeftOf" "Monitor0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "Device0"
    Driver "nouveau"
    Option "Monitor-DVI-I-1" "Monitor0"
    Option "Monitor-DVI-I-2" "Monitor1"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "Screen0"
    DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth 24
        Virtual 3360 1050
    EndSubSection
    Device "Device0"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "Layout0"
    Screen "Screen0"
EndSection

xrandr produces an OK looking result as well:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 3360 x 1050, maximum 8192 x 8192

If anyone has any suggestions or has encountered a similar problem I'd appreciate your help. 

Thanks!

Last edited by btwxt (2011-04-27 04:41:46)

BurntSushi

Member

From: Massachusetts

Registered: 2009-06-28

Posts: 362

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Strange Dual-Head Background Image Issue

I have a couple of ideas.

Firstly, try 'nitrogen'. It's in extra. When using it, can you select a background image for *each* screen? (There should be a drop down menu in the lower left of the nitrogen window.) You may also select "full screen," which should stretch an image across all screens. (You'll also need to select "scaled.") If this works, perhaps you'll be okay with using nitrogen---just select what you want and put `nitrogen --restore` in your .xinitrc (or window manager equivalent).

Secondly, if that doesn't work, could you copy and paste the entire output of `xrandr -q`?

---

Education is favorable to liberty. Freedom can exist only in a society of knowledge. Without learning, men are incapable of knowing their rights, and where learning is confined to a few people, liberty can be neither equal nor universal.

Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito

btwxt

Member

Registered: 2009-12-14

Posts: 34

Re: [SOLVED] Strange Dual-Head Background Image Issue

Nitrogen does the job after some tweaking, thanks for that suggestion.  I suppose I can mark this thread as solved, but I still never determined what broke the original configuration that used awsetbg or feh.  This will work for now, thanks!

For fun, here is the xrandr output:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 3360 x 1050, maximum 8192 x 8192
DVI-I-1 connected 1680x1050+1680+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 474mm x 296mm
   1680x1050      60.0*+
   1400x1050      60.0  
   1280x1024      75.0     60.0  
   1440x900       59.9  
   1280x960       60.0  
   1360x768       59.8  
   1152x864       75.0  
   1280x720       60.0  
   1024x768       75.1     70.1     60.0  
   832x624        74.6  
   800x600        72.2     75.0     60.3     56.2  
   720x480        59.9  
   640x480        72.8     75.0     66.7     60.0  
   720x400        70.1  
DVI-I-2 connected 1680x1050+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 474mm x 296mm
   1680x1050      60.0*+
   1400x1050      60.0  
   1280x1024      75.0     60.0  
   1440x900       59.9  
   1280x960       60.0  
   1360x768       59.8  
   1152x864       75.0  
   1280x720       60.0  
   1024x768       75.1     70.1     60.0  
   832x624        74.6  
   800x600        72.2     75.0     60.3     56.2  
   720x480        59.9  
   640x480        72.8     75.0     66.7     60.0  
   720x400        70.1  

vileperson

Member

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 59

Re: [SOLVED] Strange Dual-Head Background Image Issue

I just did a long awaited "Syu" on my laptop yesterday (ATI docked to two monitors) and am now noticing the exact same issue. Probably related to the new xorg? I must admit that I don't keep a propperly configured xorg.conf for dual display on this machine because I only "go dual" when docked at work. I simply...

xrandr --output LVDS --off
xrandr --ouput VGA-0 --mode 1280x1024 --right-of DVI-0

and then

feh --bg-scale path_to_desired_wallpaer.jpg

I too would like to figure out the cause instead of just changing how I get to point B without knowing why.

---

The more I know...
The more I know that I don't know.

mDuo13

Member

Registered: 2010-04-25

Posts: 94

Re: [SOLVED] Strange Dual-Head Background Image Issue

One more person in the same boat. I can at least rule out xorg-server as the culprit since I have it in my ignore list (video driver problems).  I also didn't update my nVidia and AFAIK my xorg.conf didn't change in the update.

... actually, a very rudimentary test figured out what it was. I looked at the most recent pacman log: it included an upgrade of feh from version 1.12 to version 1.14. I reverted to 1.12 using my package cache just to see how it worked... and voila!, my desktop setting script works as expected again.

For the record, the following is the version of feh that works for me:
feh-1.12-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz