I have a Dell E6400 with a docking station/port replicator and am having some issues with openSUSE 11.2 (64) that I recently installed. The two issues I have are as follows:
a. Outside the dock my laptop shuts down fine, however when the computer is in the docking station it won’t shut down, instead it goes back to the login screen. Oddly if I try to login again as soon as I enter the ‘@’ character in the password field the computer shuts down. I do have a USB keyboard and mouse attached to the docking station, thinking that was an issue I tested it attached directly to the computer with the computer undocked and found it shut down fine, the issue only happens when docked.
b. I have an external monitor attached to the docking station and my preference is for the laptop screen to be off and and the external monitor to be on. It does start this way OK however the mouse is invisible, I have to navigate to the Display applet using the keyboard and set the ‘Mirror’ option, once that is done the mouse appears again. I tried to workaround this issue by creating a ‘docked’ profile that would include .config/monitors.xml, however while I see the file is restored correctly (with clone set to true) it doesn’t seem to have any effect on the setting in the applet.
Any suggestions on how I can troubleshoot these further?
I did some more digging on this and found some additional information. With respect to my monitor and invisible mouse issue, I was able to work around the issue by generating an xorg.conf file (using sax2) when my configuration was how I wanted it and attached it to my profile. So now when I select my ‘docked’ profile it boots correctly as expected. It would be nice if the selection of profiles could be driven by rules at boot time but what I have now should work.
As to the second issue, my laptop refusing to fully shutdown when in the docking station, it appears that the computer is going into a suspend state. Looking at the log I see pm-suspend starting the suspend operation, followed by ACPI suspending. The next thing that happens is ACPI wakes up and resumes and then finally shuts down, presumably when I hit the ‘@’ symbol in the password field. Weird issue and I’m looking at it further but if anyone has any tips I’d appreciate it.
Yet more info, the laptop shuts down fine when I issue a ‘shutdown now -h’ command. I am suspecting an issue with the gnome-power-manager, if I can figure out what it is I’ll post a follow-up to hopefully assist any other folks with the same issue.
No replies to your questions. It seems very few people use docking stations.
I’m experiencing the same monitor and mouse problem with docking my Thinkpad. I didn’t think to use sax2. Makes you wonder why they’ve decided to discontinue sax2 if it’s required to set up the monitors and mouse correctly for docking. I’ll try your suggestion.
I agree in that you’d expect the dock state to recognised and the appropriate profile be automatically applied during boot. The whole docking / undocking system requires work and I’m a little disappointed that it wasn’t improved from 11.1.
Unfortunately I cannot offer any help with your shutdown problem.
Im thinking about buying one of these in the near future, however I am curious to know if you use a dual external monitor setup, and how suse handles that configuration docked/undocked.
I don’t use dual monitors, I just have an external one enabled when docked and the internal LCD off. Unfortunately my e6400, which is corporate purchased, only has the Intel graphics card which is really crappy for dual monitors as it only supports a low resolution across both monitors when 3D is enabled. If you get the e6400, I highly recommend spending a few extra bucks and get an Nvidia card.
Sorry for resucitating this old thread but less then one year is still decent and the title is IMO universal enought.
I would be interested in the following docking station: Toshiba Dynadock U10 Universal USB Dock with Video DVI and VGA
Currently I am using the KDE 3.5 desktop environment with OpenSUSE 11.1 64 bit on a Samsung Q35 pro Laptop.
Does anybody out there has any experience about whether this hardware runs well or not with 11.1? Any special driver or any known problem?
Thanks for all answers, I would really like to speed up my graphics and double my ports but docking stations are somehow rarely used (still mine is a 12" monitor, more understandable then I think).