X11 doesn't ignore laptop with display -- Semi-SOLVED

[Felig]

I have a laptop which for a couple of years has been doing duty as a desktop computer, with a monitor plugged in. All this time, regular console login has been on the laptop display, ignoring the separate monitor even if plugged in. When I started X, it would blank the laptop display and only play with the monitor.

I just rebooted it for a new kernel (2.6.24-gentoo-r5) and suddenly X's behavior has changed. Now both displays are active, at the (lower) resolution of the laptop display. I use fvwm, and part of it thinks the monitor display is the same size as the laptop display, so the taskbar shows up some ways from the bottom. Other parts of fvwm and/or X know how big the display is and let me resize windows past the area which matches the laptop.

(Edited to add that xrandr solves it in an odd way. See the last post.)

I have remerged other parts, including X drivers and libraries and whatnot. But the configuration hasn't changed, and if it should have, I didn't see any notices in the merge log.

I don't doubt that something in the config *might* have changed, but its date is Sep 2007, and it has been rebooted many times since then. I think it more likely that I missed some needed config change.

Here is the beginning of the old X log which properly ignored the laptop display:

[sera]

Maybe your BIOS let you choose to just use the external Monitor. As this is a laptop it might be not a clever solution.

In your xorg.conf you could specify the bus id of your graphic adapter in the device section so X knows which display to set up. This will also block the panel display unless you create a separate device section for it and add it to the serverlayout. EG:

[Felig]

I don't think specifying the bus id will help, since I am pretty sure it uses the same graphics card for both the lid display and the external display.

And even if the BIOS would let me choose, I sure don't want that, since I'd have to mess with the BIOS every time I plugged in a monitor or unplugged one.

This used to work; something changed in the last week or two. It's not my config, since it is dated Sep 2007.

[sera]

[Felig]

I didn't know that -- I won't be back on that machine for a couple of days, but I can ssh in and get the info.

Thanks in advance even if that doesn't fix it But if it does, then maybe I can make it dual head with two separate displays. Not sure I would want to, but it might be interesting to try....

[Felig]

I tried several variations on the BusID -- PCI:0000:01:00.0. PCI:1:0:0, PCI:01:00, PCI:01:00.0 -- none of them did anything useful. Some refused to bring up any X session, others brought up this same session with dup displays.

[Felig]

I have a workaround, and will stick with it for the time being, ie, as long as it works and until something better comes along. It involves adding xrandr commands to .xinitrc and a kluge in xorg.conf.

First, the xrandr commands in .xinitrc, added before the window manager kicks in: