"Semi-crash" during power-cut

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1

I’m using Tumbleweed with XFCE on my laptop with a 27" desktop monitor connected through HDMI. My XFCE4-display-settings is set to only use the external monitor. During my regular day, I only use the external monitor.

My semi-crash just happened. I was in the middle of typing and we had a power cut. The electricity went down for the whole neighbourhood. The external monitor went black. I disconnected the hdmi in the hope to get back the laptop screen. Nothing.

I did save my work and shutdown by typing the keystrokes blind.

In this situation, how can I re-enable the laptop lcd panel? Disconnecting the hdmi cable to the external monitor didn’t re-enable the lcd panel on the laptop.

Thanks

2

I’m not an XFCE user but the desktop display ocnfiguration lives at ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/displays.xm (based on a quick search).

I would login to a VT (eg Ctrl+Alt+ F3) as the user and remove it or rename it…

mv ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/displays.xml   ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/displays.xml.bak

then log back into your graphical desktop session.

3

How to I do that?

  • the laptop lcd panel is off because of my xfce settings
  • the external monitor is off because of the power cut.

How would KDE deal with that? If there is no external monitor suddenly not available would KDE/plasma automatically re-enable laptop LCD panel?

Thanks

4

When it boots you get a grub screen? If so edit and add a 3 so it boots to multi-user target.

The other option is disconnect the laptop battery for 10-20mins and plug back in…

5

What I was looking for is to automatically switch to screen that work / is on (ie: gets electricity) to be able to save what I’m in the middle of doing before shutting down.

How do people deal with laptops at the office and then take their laptops home and at home their don’t have external monitors and external mouse…?

Thanks

6

So some laptops have a function button to switch from external to internal, check that out. Log in from another computer over ssh and check things out.

7

It can be done with “disper” in the X11:Utilities development repository…

Disper re-routes your screen output to one or more connected displays. For example when giving a presentation, all one wants is that the beamer, which has just been connected, is able to show whatever you prepared.

8

I frequently change display configuration depending on location. I have two displays and a laptop display at my office, usually just the laptop display when out in the field, or one external display and laptop display when at home. The KDE Plasma display settings cater for this (automatically).

Separate to the above, My Dell laptop has a F8 function to control on/off/mirror/extend display behavior.

9

From looking, I also have it but xfce4-display-settings only shows the external monitor, it does NOT show the laptop LCD panel.

Does this mean that I need to reinstall xfce? or remove all configs ~/.config/xfce4?

Thanks

10

If only one display is shown in the XFCE display settings, then you must have disabled the laptop display at the hardware level, hence the earlier suggestion about a hardware function key. Laptop model?

11

It’s an Alienware m16RII with nvidia 4060 and an integrated intel arc.

$ fastfetch
┌──────────────────────Hardware──────────────────────┐
│ Host: Alienware m16 R2
│ cpu: Intel(R) Core(TM) Ultra 9 185H (22) @ 5.10 GHz
│ gpu: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Max-Q / Mobile [Discrete]
│ gpu: Intel Arc Graphics @ 2.35 GHz [Integrated]
│ mem: [7%] 2.15 GiB / 30.87 GiB
│ swap: [0%] 0 B / 31.52 GiB
│ drv : [28%] 15.74 GiB / 55.98 GiB ext4
│ drv : [33%] 595.43 GiB / 1.79 TiB ext4
│ drv : [6%] 54.60 GiB / 849.58 GiB ext4
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
  • I have tried the Fn:F8 and it does nothing
  • I just checked the BIOS and there is no setting to disable the lcd panel (that I can see).

What else can I do to check or reset? Would getting a live ISO help to check if it’s hardware or settings?

Thanks

12

Yes, worth testing with a Live ISO.

We need a little more detail about what you’re observing. Does the laptop display work at the start of the boot process? In other words, does it show the firmware/BIOS screen? Show the bootloader (GRUB)? Show early kernel messages?

Since you reported an abrupt power outage, I would check the laptop backlighting - you can shine a torch at the display and check if the panel is actually rendering but extremely dim perhaps. Also check the BIOS/UEFI… if the machine is in a dGPU-only mode and something glitched, the internal panel display routing might be affected.

13

I try the live iso over the weekend

Yes, the laptop display is used for:

1st. the alienware logo
2nd. the grub menu
3rd. the log of the services being started (i have removed quiet and disabled plymouth)

Over the weekend, I will simulate the power oiutage by disconnecting the power.

Thanks

14

So only once the OS starts to load the graphical environment the display goes dark.

No don’t do that - no one asked you to do that. What was asked is for you to check the current UEFI regarding the iGPU/dGPU settings (if there are any).

15

Correct.

How do I do that?

Thanks

16

How to access the UEFI or BIOS without booting into Microsoft Windows

  1. Turn on the computer.
  2. At the Dell logo, tap the F2 key several times."
17

Do you have autologin enabled? XFCE only starts after login. Since you still have Yast in a tty, you could add a new user, login and that user and check

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