Blank primary monitor on oneiric, only output on external monitor. (NVIDIA 8400M GS)
And such I require the community's help once more.
My problem is that after the upgrade to Oneiric my primary monitor on my laptop doesn't get detected. Even the BIOS screen appears on my second monitor.(!) In other words, I have to plug in a secondary monitor to even use Ubuntu. I tried to 'Detect Displays' in the nvidia-settings program (and the usual Gnome display program) but it doesn't show my monitor. Even when I reboot into Vista (yes, I use Vista for gaming, I'm too lazy to upgrade it to 7) the output remains on my secondary screen.
My primary screen doesn't get detected in Vista either. (not by using the Nvidia Control Panel and not by using the default Display manager in Windows)
I should note that I had this problem before in 11.04 when I killed Xorg too frequently. The reason I killed Xorg so many times was because Unity wasn't responding in a dual-monitor setup. I Still don't know exactly how I fixed the problem back then, but it solved itself somehow. After that, it happened to me multiple times in 11.04 when Unity crashed using Dual-Monitor setup. Sometimes booting in Vista revived the primary monitor, sometimes removing the battery out of my laptop solved the problem. But this time, none of these things work, and I'm out of options. Somehow the video-card thinks it only has the VGA output, which is of course not the case.
And now, this problem appears in Oneiric every single boot. (upgraded just a few hours ago, rebooted numerous times.).
Is there anything I can do about this problem? It's driving me quite nuts right now, since I had other things to do but got hooked up trying to find a solution anywhere. I'm happy to provide extra information if required!
Re: Blank primary monitor on oneiric, only output on external monitor. (NVIDIA 8400M
You can try forcing the output on with this in /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
Option "ConnectedMonitor" "string"
where "string" is likely "DFP-0"
and adding
Option "ModeDebug" "True"
But first post your /var/log/Xorg.0.log
and the output of:
xrandr --prop
Re: Blank primary monitor on oneiric, only output on external monitor. (NVIDIA 8400M
Well I just turned on my laptop (wake on lan), SSH'ed into my laptop, executed xrandr --prop and saw it said VGA disconnected.
So I ran upstairs, and behold! The laptop monitor was on, showing the new nice login screen!
I still haven't got a clue on why it got fixed. My expectation is that it will break again though, because it used to break in 11.04 too.
Hm, it appears that I can't executy xrandr using SSH, because it shows my netbook resolution.
Is there any use for posting the outpuut of xrandr --prop and my xorg.conf now that it's solved? I will if you ask again, but for now, my problem is solved.
Re: Blank primary monitor on oneiric, only output on external monitor. (NVIDIA 8400M
I'll have a look anyway out of curiosity..
The Xorg log file is of most use:
/var/log/Xorg.0.log
Have you run
sudo nvidia-xconfig
on this new install ?
Maybe you have some old cruft ...does not explain windows not working correctly, it normally does very well with multiple displays.
Taking the battery out would force a cold reset.
1 Attachment(s)
Re: Blank primary monitor on oneiric, only output on external monitor. (NVIDIA 8400M
Well this is the output of xrandr --prop:
Code:
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 175, current 1440 x 900, maximum 1440 x 900
default connected 1440x900+0+0 0mm x 0mm
1440x900 50.0*
1360x768 51.0 52.0
1152x864 53.0
1024x768 54.0 55.0 56.0 57.0 58.0
960x600 59.0
960x540 60.0
840x525 61.0 62.0 63.0 64.0
832x624 65.0
800x600 66.0 67.0 68.0 69.0 70.0 71.0 72.0 73.0
800x512 74.0
720x450 75.0
720x400 76.0
700x525 77.0 78.0 79.0 80.0
680x384 81.0 82.0
640x512 83.0 84.0 85.0
640x480 86.0 87.0 88.0 89.0 90.0 91.0
640x400 92.0
640x350 93.0
576x432 94.0 95.0 96.0 97.0 98.0 99.0 100.0
512x384 101.0 102.0 103.0 104.0 105.0
416x312 106.0
400x300 107.0 108.0 109.0 110.0 111.0
360x200 112.0
320x240 113.0 114.0 115.0 116.0
320x200 117.0
320x175 118.0
Xorg.0.log is attached as odt, just remove the .odt part cause it's actually a txt file. Appearantly there's a very small size limit for .txt files and I was too lazy to make a zip file, so I just renamed it.
Sorry for the confusing extension :P And thank you for looking in to this!
Re: Blank primary monitor on oneiric, only output on external monitor. (NVIDIA 8400M
Oh, and yes, I did execute nvidia-xconfig during the time that the primary monitor wasn't working. It showed no output and didn't seem to have any directly visible effects. It might have changed xorg.conf without my knowledge though, I didn't check.
Re: Blank primary monitor on oneiric, only output on external monitor. (NVIDIA 8400M
Your internal LCD is AUO 1440x900 LVDS DFP-0.
You could re-post both file outputs with the 2nd monitor attached.
You should probably run:
sudo nvidia-xconfig
to tidy up the new upgrade/install.
Re: Blank primary monitor on oneiric, only output on external monitor. (NVIDIA 8400M
Well at this point I connected my external monitor, these are the new lines in Xorg.0.log:
Code:
[ 3937.271] (II) NVIDIA(GPU-0): Display (DELL 1905FP (CRT-0)) does not support NVIDIA 3D
[ 3937.271] (II) NVIDIA(GPU-0): Vision stereo.
[ 3947.739] (II) NVIDIA(0): Setting mode
[ 3947.739] (II) NVIDIA(0): "DFP-0:nvidia-auto-select@1440x900+0+124,CRT-0:nvidia-auto-select@1280x1024+1440+0"
[ 3948.884] (II) NVIDIA(0): Setting mode "nvidia-auto-select"
[ 3980.126] (II) XKB: reuse xkmfile /var/lib/xkb/server-9389017F38731CFD9F87AD9C54F6A7054409E867.xkm
[ 3998.129] (II) NVIDIA(0): Setting mode
[ 3998.129] (II) NVIDIA(0): "DFP-0:nvidia-auto-select@1440x900+0+124,CRT-0:nvidia-auto-select@1280x1024+1440+0"
This is xrandr --prop:
Code:
xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 175, current 2720 x 1024, maximum 2720 x 1024
default connected 2720x1024+0+0 0mm x 0mm
1440x900 50.0 119.0
1360x768 51.0 52.0
1152x864 53.0
1024x768 54.0 55.0 56.0 57.0 58.0
960x600 59.0
960x540 60.0
840x525 61.0 62.0 63.0 64.0
832x624 65.0
800x600 66.0 67.0 68.0 69.0 70.0 71.0 72.0 73.0
800x512 74.0
720x450 75.0
720x400 76.0
700x525 77.0 78.0 79.0 80.0
680x384 81.0 82.0
640x512 83.0 84.0 85.0
640x480 86.0 87.0 88.0 89.0 90.0 91.0
640x400 92.0
640x350 93.0
576x432 94.0 95.0 96.0 97.0 98.0 99.0 100.0
512x384 101.0 102.0 103.0 104.0 105.0
416x312 106.0
400x300 107.0 108.0 109.0 110.0 111.0
360x200 112.0
320x240 113.0 114.0 115.0 116.0
320x200 117.0
320x175 118.0
2720x1024 119.0*
I must note that I seem to suffer from this bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ty/+bug/813343
So the secondary screen is scrambled and weird-looking, but it shows output. I think that bug is unrelated to what I had before though.
Re: Blank primary monitor on oneiric, only output on external monitor. (NVIDIA 8400M
I'm surprised your xrandr output does not show the 2nd screen, even if disconnected...maybe it is confused by twinview.
It is also very odd that windows has problems with the internal screen.
Maybe there is a h/w problem..
Twinview & unity/compiz do not seem to work well together.
You could try good old separate X screens but this is not "windows" like..
Re: Blank primary monitor on oneiric, only output on external monitor. (NVIDIA 8400M
Yeah I was surprised by that too, but as long as the Nvidia Settings thing sees it, I'm happy :P
Yes, hardware problem is what I was thinking of too. I have had this laptop for a pretty long time now (4 or 5 years) but as long as it works, I'm not buying a new one. But somehow it repaired itself after it was powered down for an hour or something.
I might try separate X servers tomorrow (it's late now) but I think one of the reasons why I didn't use that is because it never actually worked for me. But it's a long time since I've tried. Could be just me though, in that time I didn't know what an X server actually was :)
So I could in theory be able to run KDE on one screen and Unity on the other? Or Gnome 3?
I suppose the default would be two Unity desktops?
Or am I making wrong assumptions here? I sometimes have multiple X servers running, so I know a bit of what it does, but I've never run them on separate screens.
(May I assume that the mouse will still go from one screen to another like in TwinView?)
Hm I'm absolutely going to try separate X servers, it actually sounds like fun :P
