External Monitor on Laptop (11.4 64 bit, radeon)

English Hardware
1

HI all,

I was after some help…

I have just bought a small 19 inch HD TV. It’s resolution is 720p and it has a d-sub/vga connection on the back.
I’d like to hook my laptop up to it to watch movies on (in bed, natch - no, not that kind of movie either).

My laptop: Dell Inspiron 1501, dual core, 64 bit OS 11.4 (KDE4), ati xpress 200M with radeon driver, no xorg.conf.

I plug the tv in and go to monitor settings in kde. It lists both (VGA-0 and LVDS).
VGA-0 is at the top, and its position is ‘absolute’ with no other options. resolution isn’t quite right (768 vertical not 720, but its widescreen)
LVDS is at the bottom, it has lots of position options (clone-of, left right top etc). Resolution is correct (800 vertical, widescreen, native for the lcd)

Initially, the monitor is a clone of the LVDS (actually, according to KDE, the monitor is primary (absolute) and the LVDS is clone-of).
This actually works ok, the monitor has a black horizontal bar at the bottom which the mouse can’t enter, but not too bad. One major problem is artifacts being left on the screen when dragging windows about. Strangely, this only happens in the bottom third of both screens (they are cloned). Could be because I have kwin’s effects turned on though…

However, what I actually want is LVDS to be primary, with monitor right-of, not cloned.

Problems: I can’t seem to get LVDS to be the primary. I’ve tried setting LVDS to be the ‘Default/Primary’ with the button in monitor settings no joy. Clicking ‘Identify Monitors’ shows both labels on both screens on top of each other.

Setting the LVDS to be left-of or right-of the (primary) monitor results in KDE logging me out.

Does this actually work for anyone, or do I need to generate an xorg.conf?
If I generate a 2-monitor xorg.conf, will it still work without the tv plugged in?

Note: This works fine on my wifes laptop (Ubuntu 11.4, Gnome, intel GMA 950). She plugs the monitor in and gnome gives her a second monitor ‘right-of’ the lvds. This just works. No need for her to do anything.

2

Hi weighty_foe

I have a work laptop with a 965 GM graphics chipset. The dual screen operation works perfectly as you report. My old ThinkPad with an ATI X300 graphics chipset behaves much like you report, (except I don’t experience the artifacts that you do). IIRC, I can set the LVDS to be primary, but I can’t get the resolution set correctly (for LVDS) when my external LCD monitor is connected. I don’t use this laptop much now, and don’t generally connect secondary monitors to it anyway. You should probably file a bug report for the problems you’re experiencing.

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/

https://bugzilla.novell.com/index.cgi

3

This should work. A couple of years back with an older version of openSUSE and an older version of KDE, I wrote this guide: Laptop external (cloned) projector support in KDE where :

  • post#1/#2 are for AMD radeon hardware
  • post#3 for Intel hardware
  • post#4 for nvidia hardware (as I never did get screen shots from nVidia users)

Last I tested on my Dell Studio 1537 laptop with the Catalyst-1.5 driver (at the time) on Radeon HD3450 hardware, on KDE-4.4.4 (openSUSE-11.3) post#1/#2 were still accurate. I typically only use this capability during business meetings where I need to project to a large screen.

4

Last I tested on my Dell Studio 1537 laptop with the Catalyst-1.5 driver (at the time) on Radeon HD3450 hardware, on KDE-4.4.4 (openSUSE-11.3) post#1/#2 were still accurate. I typically only use this capability during business meetings where I need to project to a large screen.

@oldcpu: I remember the guide you wrote, but the OP’s situation specifically concerns the behaviour of old laptops with ATI chipsets using the radeon driver. I don’t use my old ThinkPad much now, and don’t generally use dual screen operation (unlike my work laptop with Intel graphics which works perfectly with a second monitor attached).

5

Hmm … I note xrandr worked with my Dell Studio 1537 with the radeon driver (Radeon HD3450 graphics). One did not need the Catalyst fglrx driver. I also have older ATI hardware (either RS100 or RS200) on our Linux club laptop, and I think I tested the radeon driver driving an external display with this laptop and it worked. A second display (conference room projector) worked in this case. I note the OP has an ati xpress 200M (RS400/RS480), and I also note many users have struggled with that specific hardware over the years. So maybe the ati xpress 200M is an exceptionally difficult case ?

I could check out Linux User Group laptop again to see if the radeon driver still works with it in driving an external display. This laptop has Tumbleweed-11.4 on it currently.

6

Well, my old laptop has openSUSE 11.3 installed, with KDE4.4.4, so this may impact on the behaviour I get. Anyway, when I get some time, I’ll upgrade it to 11.4, and see if I can get the dual screen config working properly.

7

I’m now typing from our Linux User Group ancient laptop, with Radeon IGP 330M/340M/350M graphic hardware, and I have two displays running. The laptop integrated display (called LVDS) and an external projection in one of our conference rooms (called VGA-0 in this case). The second display is to the right. There are no nasty artifacts. It looks wonderful. This laptop is running Tumbleweed-11.4, but to the best of my knowledge neither the radeon opensource driver, nor Mesa, nor X server have been updated between Tumbleweed-11.4 and openSUSE-11.4.

Now I am running LXDE on this ancient laptop, and NOT KDE. I also did not see all the functionality that I needed to use when running ‘lxrandr’ to configure the second display. So instead I simply configured the 2nd display (to the right) using the xrandr command. I used a thinkwik guide for xrandr here: Xorg RandR 1.2 - ThinkWiki

Before plugging in the external display, I typed :


xrandr

so as to learn what the internal integrated display was called. That told me i twas called LVDS and it was using 1024x768 at 60 Hz on this ancient netbook. I noted from that the display VGA-0 was not connected.

Then I plugged in the cable for our conference room external display. Again I typed ‘xrandr’ and this time it showed me information on both LVDS (internal display) and also VGA-0 (which clearly had to be the external display). I noted a 1024x768 @ 60 Hz setting available for our external conference room display, which was good, as I was pretty certain I could select that and keep same dimensions/layout as on this netbook.

So then I typed:


xrandr --output VGA-0 --auto --right-of LVDS

and it ‘just worked’.

To switch OFF I will need to type:


xrandr --output VGA-0 --off

… ok, this is LXDE. Its not KDE. But is not KDE supposed to be easier and more feature friendly than this minimal LXDE system ?

I’m thinking again the problem is with the ATI Xpress 200M hardware. Its never had superb support under GNU/Linux IMHO. This much older AMD/ATI hardware ‘just works’ and I know my Radeon HD3450 ‘just works’ here.

8

Thanks for the replies.

@oldcpu - thanks for pointing me to your guides, didn’t solve the problem unfortunately.

I think you’re right in that it is the actual hardware that is the problem - the 200M just isn’t very good!

By the looks of things, everything is ‘working’ in that the output is sent to the external monitor (although I can’t explain why it crashes if I try and set the LVDS to be right of rather than cloned, but hey), I’m of the opinion that the card or driver (or the combination of both) just isn’t up to the task. Oh well, at least the wife’s laptop works!

I am going to try the xrandr commands rather than using the gui, see if that makes any difference. I suspect it won’t but I may be pleasantly surprised - I’ll post the results anyhow.

I used to have an X1300 card in another laptop using the fglrx binary. The only way I could get that to work dual head was with two xorg.confs - one for single & one for dual. I had to log in to a console & pick the one I wanted, then startx. Things have improved a lot since then :slight_smile:

9

Thats unfortunate.

So if I read the above correctly, then sending:


xrandr --output VGA-0 --auto --right-of LVDS

or something similar, crashes your laptop Desktop. Not nice ! Do the /var/log/messages or /var/log/Xorg.0.log files provide any insight as to what is taking place to cause the crash ? … or perhaps you have not tried that yet but you are about to.

Hopefully it won’t crash, but rather, will simply give helpful error messages in the terminal. I take it this happens with and without special desktop effects enabled ?

You could try writing a bug report on openSUSE (with guidance here: openSUSE:Submitting bug reports - openSUSE … use your openSUSE forum user name and password when logging on to bugzilla) and include all pertinant details in the bug report (don’t force them to sift through a forum thread).

Now they will likely say the problem is upstream, in which case ask them to provide you the link to the bug too for raising the same issue upstream.

However given the age of the 200M, unless there is an easy workaround (such as some config file edit) then there may be no fix coming. But it does not hurt to ask.

You may have more success in booting to an openSUSE-12.1 liveCD, then forcing the same bug (as it is likely there) and then writing the bug report on openSUSE-12.1. The newer releases tend to get more attention in bug reports.

10

I haven’t tried the xrandr commands yet - I was using the monitor display GUI provided by KDE to do this. I’ve not tried without special effects either.
Hopefully I’ll get a chance to try a few things this evening at home. Once I do I’ll post what I find here, and then look at posting a bug report as you suggest - if you don’t ask you don’t get :slight_smile:

Good call on the 12.1 livecd, I’ll give that a go as well.