HI Gang,
I’ve been using 13.1 for quite some time with few issues on an HP 8510W laptop in a docking station.
However, I installed some updates today, including the nVidia proprietary drivers from the nVidia repo, and on restarting I had the KDE login screen, but no login dialogue. After some fiddling, I realized that the dialogue was on the primary display, which was inactive since it is in the docking station. I can login by typing my password, so it’s not a horrible handicap, provided I don’t mistype it. Is there any way to tell KDE to put the login dialogue on all monitors?
once X starts, the DM’s greeter / login screen starts
once login is completed, a particular user session is begun on a particular DE
The problem described:
greeter screen is (to use familiar or popular terminology) in extended mode, and the actual login box is only displayed on the primary monitor
The analysis:
by default, all monitors should be displaying the same thing (i.e. cloned) … meaning you should have a login box on all monitors
consequently, its obvious that some X configuration has been applied such that monitors behave as an extended workspace
Ordinarily that is actually a nice touch, but in your use case, it is actually undesired.
I do not know if this is the nvidia stack’s default behaviour (to designate the laptop’s screen as primary), or whether it set up such config in the xorg.conf (if applicable). In any regard, you should be able to correct for this if you poke around … at the very least, you can prevent the extension on the DM’s greeter screen via a xrandr script in the DM … and then use a xrandr frontend under the DE to restore the desirable settings
I believe it is the default of the nVidia system, it seems to default to the extended screen spread across the two monitors.
You will need to pan side-to-side to get to things.
From the menu, go to System => Configuration => Configure NVIDIA X Server Settings.
With luck, the configuration panel will pop up on your current screen, or partly on the screen. If it is partly on the screen, drag it to where you can see it.
I am in the process of moving, so my secondary display is disconnected. As such, it is not detected, and I don’t get the dialogue in the panel, so I am going to have to go by (foggy) memory.
I think in X Server Display Configuration, one of the boxes has a drop-down (you might have to click on the Advanced button there, first) where you can choose between various choices, one of which is “Clones” or similar. Choose that, apply, and you should then have cloned displays instead of side-by-side displays.
Thanx for the feedback. The login prompt was appearing on the external monitor prior to the update.
The displays are cloned, and in nVidia X Server Settings the external monitor is set as the primary display, position is Absolute +0 +0, and the laptop screen is off.
I get the login prompt when I suspend to RAM, but that of course is handled my KDE and not kdm…
One more data point; xrandr shows the laptop display as connected, even though it remains off when I open the lid …
:~> /usr/bin/xrandr --current
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192
VGA-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
TV-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
LVDS-0 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
1920x1200 60.0 +
DVI-I-0 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 521mm x 293mm
1920x1080 60.0*+ 59.9 50.0 60.1 60.0 50.0
1680x1050 60.0
1600x1200 60.0
1440x900 59.9
1280x1024 75.0 60.0
1280x720 60.0 59.9 50.0
1024x768 75.0 60.0
800x600 75.0 60.3
720x576 50.0 50.1
720x480 59.9 60.1
640x480 75.0 59.9 59.9
HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
Yes, which is why it is giving you the 2 desktops. In my case, I could not give precise information to you because the other monitor is unplugged and packed away, so nVidia now sees it and configures it as a single monitor unit. When it is plugged in, even when turned off, the second monitor is detected.
Your laptop display is still connected, even though it is off, and is therefore detected, even though it is detected as “disconnected”, so the double-monitor interface is active.
Even though
The displays are cloned, and in nVidia X Server Settings the external monitor is set as the primary display, position is Absolute +0 +0, and the laptop screen is off.
If you are still having the problem (I’m unclear on that, now), then just change one or more of those settings away, then back again, then apply, and see if that fixes it.
I realized that nvida-settings saves its settings in each user’s Home directory (even Root’s), so it’s not system wide. I used it to generate 20-nvidia.conf and placed it in/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/
Does not normally exist it will be used if you make one. It used to write a xorg.conf files if you ran it as root… I don’t see how it would be able to write to all users unless it had root access in any case.