Laptop external monitor

English Hardware
1

I’m have been using suse 11.2 on a inspiron 1720 for about a month and have just upgraded it to 11.3.

Before the upgrade I was using just the laptop monitor with no problem without an xorg.conf file. I have now got a 22" external monitor.

I intend on using the external monitor on its own at home and just the laptop display while I’m at uni. The problem is that when i boot the system with the external monitor attached and the laptop lid closed, all of the boot info is displayed on the external monitor but the logon screen and desktop are only displayed on the laptop screen and the external monitor is disabled. And when i shutdown the system the display reverts back to the external monitor.

I have tried to configure the display in the system settings but the second monitor is not listed there.

I have got the external monitor to work with a xorg.conf file but for me to get the laptop display to work on its own mean i need to boot up the system in runlevel 3 and remove the xorg.conf to get it to work.

Any help with this will be great

Richard

2

What graphics chipset and driver are you using? I think this will make a difference to the answer. For example, AFAIU the intel driver will use the external monitor as the primary monitor (by default) if plugged in.

You may need to specify the primary monitor in xorg.conf with something like

Option "Primary" "DVI-0"

FWIW, a similar discussion here:

[SOLVED] Automating Xorg RandR turning laptop screen off if external monitor is connected](http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/automating-xorg-randr-turning-laptop-screen-off-if-external-monitor-is-connected-779386/)

3

I’m have a Nvidia GF8600M GT graphics card and using the nvidia driver set.

Regarding using xrandr to set the monitor it only picks up the laptop screen but not the external monitor. The nvidia settings detects the two monitors but setting it there causes the laptop monitor not to work when booted up with out the external monitor connected.
Looking in the Xorg.0.log file shows that the driver is detecting both monitors.

NVIDIA(0): Connected display device(s) on GeForce 8600M GT at PCI:1:0:0:
NVIDIA(0):     DELL SX2210T (CRT-0)
NVIDIA(0):     Seiko/Epson (DFP-0)

Also the linked post states that when the second monitor is connected it sets them up as a cloned set. When i connect the second monitor nothing happens and xrandr shows no new monitors attached. the same happens when the second monitor is connected before boot.

Richard

4

Nvidia drivers seem to cause the most problems with dual screen configs and monitor detection! Maybe you should try generating a basic xorg.conf with ‘nvidia-xconfig’ utility at runlevel 3. This thread, (although concerned with display mode configuration issues) details how to do this, then use ‘nvidia-settings’ to tweak your configuration. It might work for you in getting the external monitor behaving as desired.

5

Problem solved. I was trying to use your suggestion of setting the primary monitor in the xorg.conf. Playing around with the “50-screen.conf” in the xorg.conf.d folder. I’ve found that putting

Option "metamodes" "CRT: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"

in the file works. Both with the external monitor connected and the laptop screen by its self.

Thanks for the help.

Richard

6

Good work. Thanks for the update.