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Trac3R

Member

From: Lübeck - Germany

Registered: 2007-01-26

Posts: 30

Website

[solved] 2nd Monitor and Fn-Keys

Hi, folks!

I have a strange problem here. Using a Asus A3N Laptop with Intel 855GM graphic card, I'm not able to switch to an extern monitor after boot. I can use Fn+F8 during boot and that works fine. But when the login prompt or the KDM in init 5 appears, there's no way to switch anymore. Even if I had choosen an external monitor, I can't go back! And since there is only one display at once allowed (isn't it?), that sucks! I have to reboot to work on the Laptop's display again.

So this thing is absolutely appart from Xorg. And I really don't want to have a second display right, left or anywhere next to my first one. So editing xorg.conf won't help me further. And the situation at boot time shows, that it's no hardware/driver issue. So what can I do to get it up and running?

Please help!

Last edited by Trac3R (2007-12-06 00:45:16)

Trac3R

Member

From: Lübeck - Germany

Registered: 2007-01-26

Posts: 30

Website

Re: [solved] 2nd Monitor and Fn-Keys

I now installed extra/xf86-video-intel instead of extra/xf86-video-i810, which might have been obsolete for my card. This driver now offers some features for external VGA monitors, together with the Randr packages.

I now added the following lines to my xorg.conf:

#This is stuff for multimonitor
#
Section "Monitor"
 Identifier   "VGA-Monitor"
 Option       "Monitor-VGA" "VGA monitor" #Randr drivers for external VGA
 VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
 ModelName    "VGA"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
 Identifier "Screen1"
 Device "Card0"
 Monitor "VGA-Monitor"
 DefaultDepth 16
 SubSection "Display"
  Depth 16
  Modes "1024x768"
 EndSubSection
 SubSection "Display"
  Depth 24
  Modes "1024x768"
 EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
 Identifier "Multihead"
 Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
 Screen 1 "Screen1"
 Option "Xinerama" "on"
 Option "Clone" "off"
 InputDevice    "Mouse0" "AlwaysCore"
 InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
 InputDevice    "Mouse[1]" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
 Option "DefaultServerLayout" "X.org Configured" #the original server layout
Endsection

#end of multimonitor stuff

Now it works under X. But I'm not happy with this, actually it was not what I had in mind. And even though I use the original server layout by default and the new should only run if I type startx -layout Multihead, the VGA port is always activated, which is not perfect in aspects of saving energy. Also there is the issue of running without X.

So please, if anyone has an idea how to use multiple monitors without X, or at least how to deactivate VGA when I don't want it to run, help me out here.

Thanks

Trac3R

Member

From: Lübeck - Germany

Registered: 2007-01-26

Posts: 30

Website

Re: [solved] 2nd Monitor and Fn-Keys

Seems like a soliloquy.
I was pretty busy in the recent days, so I haven't done so much about this issue.

I've been told that I don't need to restart the xserver to create a 2nd output. After I added the Xrandr stuff into the xorg.conf, I'm able to switch to muti- or singlemonitor. For anyone who is interessted in this, see man xrandr.
I think I figured out by now, how it works. Really nice.

Ok. Thanks to brain0, he helped me a lot via usenet.

The other thing that was mentioned is, that I could intercept ACPI events and then launch any program I'd like. Nice idea, but since acpid reads /proc/acpi/event and noone else is allowed to (even root) and I don't know another way to intercept events, I keep it as it is. Besides, my laptop has gotten some stange moods when pressing the Fn Keys. Sometimes I receive black screens, sometimes the system locks completely.

For me this issue is solved, I do it without the Keys.

Thanks for watching!