Using only external monitor (without X)

helium89 · 2009-10-08 20:25:11

I'm sorry if this has already been discussed, but I searched for it and didn't see anything not related to X.

Last week either the backlight or the lcd inverter on my laptop died, so I've been operating with only my external monitor. This is fine as long as I have X running, but I was wondering if there is a way to disable the internal monitor and just use my external monitor when I'm just using the console without X. It would make dealing with upgrade issues and testing configurations a lot easier if I didn't have to try to guess my way back into an X session once I kill/break X (not to mention sometimes it's nice to just ctrl-alt-f1 into a terminal every once in a while).

If it makes it any easier, I am using a dell e1505 with the nvidia go7300 card (using the nvidia drivers) with the latest non-testing kernel (I haven't custom compiled one yet). Any help that can be offered would be great. If there's anything I left out, just let me know.

Thanks in advance,
Andrew

Lich · 2009-10-09 08:44:09

I have the exact same LCD problem, but I can see the external CRT monitor just fine. I just plug it in the VGA out and I get cloning, so I see the same thing on both monitors, but the laptop one is barely visible. AFAIK there is no way of controlling the dislay from the tty, it should just work.

helium89 · 2009-10-09 17:38:01

That's what I thought should happen, but for some reason when I switch to the tty, my monitor stops getting a signal until I switch back to X. I'll keep playing with it and see if there's something I missed.

Lich · 2009-10-09 18:00:04

helium89 wrote:

That's what I thought should happen, but for some reason when I switch to the tty, my monitor stops getting a signal until I switch back to X. I'll keep playing with it and see if there's something I missed.

Ooooo, this is another issue! So you can see the external monitor when you boot up, but once you go to X and switch back, you loose it? No wonder, since it falls back to your original monitor. This is supposed to happen (I think).
Just do what I do, and have X disable your original broken monitor, should be ok afterwards.
I have this in my xinitrc (I don't use a xorg.conf, only hal + xrandr)

xrandr --output LVDS --off
xrandr --output VGA-0 --mode 1280x1024 --dpi 96x96

Where LVDS is my laptop's panel/lcd and VGA-0 is my external monitor. Yours might be called differently, so do a `xrandr -q` to see the names.

Last edited by Lich (2009-10-09 18:01:05)

jw5801 · 2010-06-06 12:25:12

Did you have any luck with this? As far as I'm aware xrandr can't have any effect on where the ttys display. My ttys always display on the LVDS screen, but I'd like the opposite to be true as the laptop doesn't get used as a laptop any more and I'd like to be able to turn the laptop screen off always.

duxck · 2011-01-21 12:14:29

Okay, seems like this isn't as common as I thought it is.
I got the same issue as OP... I think.

I actually sat on my laptop the other day and as you can imagine that isn't the best of ideas.
Monitor is now broken, but I have almost always used external monitor anyway so i didn't think of it as a big deal.
How ever, what I haven't thought about before is that I only get output on external monitor while in x.

What I'd like to do is to completely disable my laptop monitor and push all output to LVDS instead of VGA-0.
I got an old HP/Compaq 6715b and some old ATI Drivers.

I did manage to shut down the VGA-0 with the snippet of code supplied above. So thank you for that.
Now I only need to figure out how to run this without having to go through x.

Gusar · 2011-01-21 14:19:03

Err, LVDS is the internal display and VGA the external. Anyway, assuming you're using KMS, add this to the kernel commandline:

video=LVDS-0:d

Check in /sys/class/drm for the exact names of the outputs, it's LVDS-1 and VGA-1 on my netbook.

tuhyk · 2011-02-05 09:39:13

Hi guys, I have a similar issue. Something went terribly wrong with my built in laptop display and the only option is to use external monitor. When I plug in the monitor and boot, the monitor turns basically in the middle of the boot process. I disconnected the internal display cable and now it works ok (i.e. I see BIOS etc). However, my suspend and hibernate functions does not work at all. It suspends, but does not wake up. The fan works, but no LEDs and monitor is off. Any ideas? It seems like similar issue.

xrandr output:

[tuhyk@dell drm]$ xrandr -q
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1680 x 1050, maximum 4096 x 4096
LVDS-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VGA-1 connected 1680x1050+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 433mm x 271mm
   1680x1050      60.0*+   74.9  
   1280x1024      75.0     60.0  
   1440x900       59.9  
   1280x960       60.0  
   1280x800       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  
   640x480        72.8     75.0     66.7     60.0  
   720x400        70.1  
TV-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

Last edited by tuhyk (2011-02-05 09:40:35)

Arch Linux

#1 2009-10-08 20:25:11

Using only external monitor (without X)

#2 2009-10-09 08:44:09

Re: Using only external monitor (without X)

#3 2009-10-09 17:38:01

Re: Using only external monitor (without X)

#4 2009-10-09 18:00:04

Re: Using only external monitor (without X)

#5 2010-06-06 12:25:12

Re: Using only external monitor (without X)

#6 2011-01-21 12:14:29

Re: Using only external monitor (without X)

#7 2011-01-21 14:19:03

Re: Using only external monitor (without X)

#8 2011-02-05 09:39:13

Re: Using only external monitor (without X)

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