How to reset user specific display configurations 12.3

Fraak · October 7, 2013, 6:28pm

Hello everyone,

Sorry to bother but after some hours of searching I am giving up. My laptop is running Suse 12.3 with Gnome for some months now without any major problems however since I switch workplace allot I get allot of different monitor setups.

At home I just got a second monitor so that means I have three now in total. After enabling the third monitor in the display manager all was working fine however after a reboot after login the screens stay black. Everything works as long as I don’t create the exact same setup.

Now I would be happy if just my two external monitors would be enabled and not my laptop but since I cant get to the configurations screen with all monitors attached I have now way to configure this. Also I searched around quite a bit to find the user specific display settings but I just cant seem to find it.

Any help is appreciated.

Kind regards,
Freek

malcolmlewis · October 7, 2013, 8:28pm

On Mon 07 Oct 2013 04:36:02 PM CDT, Fraak wrote:

Hello everyone,

Sorry to bother but after some hours of searching I am giving up. My
laptop is running Suse 12.3 with Gnome for some months now without any
major problems however since I switch workplace allot I get allot of
different monitor setups.

At home I just got a second monitor so that means I have three now in
total. After enabling the third monitor in the display manager all was
working fine however after a reboot after login the screens stay black.
Everything works as long as I don’t create the exact same setup.

Now I would be happy if just my two external monitors would be enabled
and not my laptop but since I cant get to the configurations screen with
all monitors attached I have now way to configure this. Also I searched
around quite a bit to find the user specific display settings but I just
cant seem to find it.

Any help is appreciated.

Kind regards,
Freek

Hi
In this case I think if you checked the output from the command xrandr
for your different scenarios. You could then script this out to run specific
xrandr commands when the monitors are connected and detected and enable
your desired configurations.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 12.3 (x86_64) GNOME 3.8.4 Kernel 3.7.10-1.16-desktop
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Fraak · October 7, 2013, 9:06pm

Thank you for your quick response. I could definitely do that however the problem is that when I now connect my third monitor the settings jump into a mode that all screens turn black and I have to reboot with one screen disconnected to get a view again. I was hoping for a way to reset the settings I had made with the display manager since the first time I connected the monitor everything was mirrored and that worked fine. I could then configure it with my laptop screen disabled and have a final solution.

malcolmlewis · October 7, 2013, 9:33pm

Hi
Is that third monitor connected at boot or after boot? For example using xrandr --output VGA1 should set the VGA output to active. On your laptop have you tried the Fn+Screen key to get back to a screen? Most of my notebooks can only drive two screens at a time, what GFX card do you have?

Fraak · October 7, 2013, 10:14pm

If its connected on boot I get a login on all three screens and after logging in I get a black screen. If i connected when logged in all the screens freeze and thats it. Gn + screen doesn’t do anything after that however fn+screen works fine when only two monitors are connected. Although I am pretty sure I could connect two monitors and use the laptop screen at the same time for me it would be enough if just the two separate monitors worked but not the laptop screen.

I have the Samsung ATIV Book NP880Z5E with a Intel Core i7 3635QM and a Radeon HD8870M video chip.

malcolmlewis · October 8, 2013, 12:15am

Hi
So are you running the proprietary driver or oss?

I need to test my HP 2000 with three screens connected at boot…

Fraak · October 8, 2013, 12:21am

Hey,

That would be the oss drivers.

malcolmlewis · October 8, 2013, 12:34am

Hi
Likewise for me, I have the Radeon HD 7340, I just tried booting it would only let me use two screens at a time…

deano_ferrari · October 8, 2013, 1:10am

I think that is all that is possible (spanning within one DE) unless using displayport technology…

malcolmlewis · October 8, 2013, 2:22am

Hi
So I tried;


xrandr --output VGA-0 --off

xrandr --output LVDS --auto --rotate normal --pos 0x0 --output HDMI-0 --mode 1280x1024 --rotate normal --right-of LVDS

xrandr --output HDMI-0 --off

xrandr --output LVDS --auto --rotate normal --pos 0x0 --output VGA-0 --mode 1280x1024 --rotate normal --right-of LVDS

xrandr --output VGA-0 --off

xrandr --output LVDS --auto --rotate normal --pos 0x0 --output VGA-0 --mode 1280x1024 --rotate normal --right-of LVDS --output HDMI-0 --mode 1280x1024 --rotate normal --left-of LVDS
xrandr: cannot find crtc for output LVDS

So one or other works fine and trying both fails, or do I need to determine the crtc?

deano_ferrari · October 8, 2013, 2:37am

malcolmlewis:

Hi
So I tried;


xrandr --output VGA-0 --off

xrandr --output LVDS --auto --rotate normal --pos 0x0 --output HDMI-0 --mode 1280x1024 --rotate normal --right-of LVDS

xrandr --output HDMI-0 --off

xrandr --output LVDS --auto --rotate normal --pos 0x0 --output VGA-0 --mode 1280x1024 --rotate normal --right-of LVDS

xrandr --output VGA-0 --off

xrandr --output LVDS --auto --rotate normal --pos 0x0 --output VGA-0 --mode 1280x1024 --rotate normal --right-of LVDS --output HDMI-0 --mode 1280x1024 --rotate normal --left-of LVDS
xrandr: cannot find crtc for output LVDS

So one or other works fine and trying both fails, or do I need to determine the crtc?

Well, you’ll definitely be limited by the number of CRTC’s you have, but AFAIU, the desktop environments are limited to spanning to 2 displays with xrandr.

Interesting thread here that I was reading:

grub2 - xrandr three screens - Ask Ubuntu

deano_ferrari · October 8, 2013, 2:55am

It might help to know the hardware that the OP has. AMD’s Eyefinity technology may be just the ticket for his desired configuration (if money isn’t an issue)

AMD Recommended Components

Some working examples discussed:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=116502

https://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/hardware/487740-ati-radeon-hd-5870-eyefinity-6-xorg.html

Tyler_K · October 8, 2013, 6:24am

Malcolm, your situation is different than the OPs – If google is being a reliable servant, it appears your HP uses an E2-1800 APU (which features a HD7340). There is no discrete adapter. You can use “xrandr --listproviders” and it will let you know how many crtcs the adapter has and how many outputs you have. I suspect it will be “crtcs: 2 outputs: 3” for you.
You can drive more then one output on a single crtc, but the outputs being driven would have to be using the same set of timings (see: HowVideoCardsWork ). Effectively, you won’t be able to do that with your VGA and HDMI outputs (i.e. VGA panels typically @75Hz, HDMI @60Hz).

As a side note, you can specify what crtc an output uses (see xrandr --help)

Getting back to the OP – they have a hybrid graphics (PowerXpress) based system, with an Intel HD 4000 iGPU and a discrete AMD HD8870M adapter.

There are a number of possibilities regarding which adapter each of the different outputs is attached to.

They should check the output of:

xrandr --screen 0
xrandr --screen 1
xrandr --listproviders

as those would give a good picture of how things are wired.

I not exactly clear from their description about a few things, but getting the desired result should be doable

malcolmlewis · October 8, 2013, 5:20pm

On Tue 08 Oct 2013 04:26:03 AM CDT, Tyler K wrote:

Malcolm, your situation is different than the OPs – If google is being
a reliable servant, it appears your HP uses an E2-1800 APU (which
features a HD7340). There is no discrete adapter. You can use “xrandr
–listproviders” and it will let you know how many crtcs the adapter has
and how many outputs you have. I suspect its crtcs: 2 outputs:3.
You can drive more then one output on a single crtc, but the outputs
being driven would have to be using the same set of timings (see:
‘HowVideoCardsWork’ (http://tinyurl.com/qfmuc78) ). Effectively, you
won’t be able to do that with your VGA and HDMI outputs (i.e. VGA panels
typically @75Hz, HDMI @60Hz).

Hi
Yes, that’s the APU, too many screens for me anyway But nice to know
I can drive a couple of external monitors. Three laptops and qsynergy
is enough, I guess I could add a screen to each one so would have six
displays running… sounds too busy for me!!

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 12.3 (x86_64) GNOME 3.8.4 Kernel 3.7.10-1.16-desktop
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please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!

Fraak · October 9, 2013, 6:33pm

Thnx for the effort guys however I am still wondering how I can reset my settings. The thing is that whenever I connect the third monitor all screens turn black and all I have left is a working cursor. Also I can use the FN buttons but then the screens stay black with that cursor. At that point I need to reboot and on the login screen I see all three screens mirrored after logging in its back to the black screens with a cursor.

What I need to do is reset the configuration to the default for the setup with 3 monitors connected without having the third monitor connected.

Thank you for the help guys it is much appreciated.

deano_ferrari · October 9, 2013, 9:59pm

The answer might depend on which desktop and version you’re using. For example, KDE (starting with 4.11) has recently moved from KScreen instead of kcm_randr, so it would change the config file. If using KDE prior to this have a look at ~/.kde4/share/config/krandrrc and delete if necessary. (I’m not sure about where to look for Gnome though).

Fraak · October 9, 2013, 11:21pm

Hey there,

Thank you for your response, I am using gnome though. Hope some one else can point me in the right direction.

deano_ferrari · October 9, 2013, 11:40pm

Yes, we really need a Gnome 3 user to chime in. In the meantime, may be this will help (suggests ~/.config/monitors.xml)

Change primary monitor in Gnome 3

Fraak · October 10, 2013, 12:43am

Yep there it was. Could easily spot the wrong configuration and remove it.

Thank you very much!

deano_ferrari · October 10, 2013, 12:45am

My pleasure