11.4 dual monitors - left monitor not coming out of powersave

English Hardware
#1

I have a really strange X (?) problem. My physical setup is:

Dell Optiplex 990
VisionTek 210 nV DMS59 PCIe video card (with a DVI splitter)
dual Dell P2411H monitors

I’m running OpenSuSE 11.4 (x86_64 fully patched) with the current nvidia drivers and kernel module. I’m running KDE and kdm in case that matters.

I’ll be happy to provide the xorg.conf file (written automatically by nvidia-settings) if that would be helpful.

If I power off the two monitors, and then power them on again, the right monitor will come back on. The left monitor (which is the primary one… it’s the one where the login screen appears when you are first logging in) reports that it is in power save mode. Wiggling the mouse, typing, etc., do not wake it up. The only thing that wakes it up is the detach the DVI cable from the monitor and reattach it (and sometimes it takes a couple tries).

I have used two (identical) video cards and splitters, and the problem occurred with both, so the problem doesn’t appear to be with either of them. I also swapped monitors, but after the swap, the problem still occurred on the left monitor, and the old left monitor (which was now right) came on fine, so it doesn’t appear to be a monitor problem.

I’m baffled. For now, I just won’t turn off the monitors (or at least not the left monitor). Anyone have any better suggestions, or even better, a fix?

Thanks

#2

I don’t have DVI-connected monitors or nvidia hardware, so can only offer general advice here. I did find a potential solution here:

[mythbuntu] [SOLVED] How do I stop Nvidia / Xorg Autodetecting? - Ubuntu Forums](http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=913224)

In particular, post #7 details how to create/modify xorg.conf so that a manual modeline is incorporated, in absence of the monitor being attached, (or turned off). Now since you have two monitors attached, you’ll need to adjust the “ConnectedMonitor” name to suit. For example, if you have DVI-0 and DVI-1, and the second is the problem (with dynamic detection), you could declare it like this (in the ‘Screen’ section).

Option         "ConnectedMonitor" "DVI-1"

This command will give you the appropriate port name(s) for each attached monitor

xrandr

Notice also the use of

Option         "ExactModeTimingsDVI" "TRUE"

to force Xorg ‘to ignore the fact that it can’t get any EDID info because the TV is turned off, and just do what it’s **** well told!’ (to quote the author) :slight_smile:

I hope you get the gist of the approach used here. You’ll need to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf with root privileges, and be careful with your typing. I hope this helps.

#3

Another potentially useful thread (same approach):

Forcing video output on second external DVI monitor with nview when it’s not connected in Windows XP? - NVIDIA Forums