Xserver settings don't persist after logout/reboot

[dakahn]

Hello! I use a dual monitor setup with the monitor on the right rotated to the left into portrait mode. I have to re-rotate my right most monitor in nvidia-settings every time I log in or reboot. This is pretty frustrating. It's made even more frustrating by the fact that I actually _somehow_ fixed this problem once and swapping my second monitor (same make/model) after the old one started to die brought the problem back.

I have tried manually deleting xorg.conf and all the backups and then re-generating new configs with `sudo nvidia-xconfig` and then updating my settings with `sudo nvidia-settings` but the next time I log out and log back in -- my monitor has de-rotated.

Funnily enough (actually very unfunny) after logging out and logging in and seeing my monitor rotation settings reset if I open up my xorg.conf it seems like the rotation settings are right where they should be

So my educated guess is that my x config is getting clobbered somehow on boot and some default rotation settings are getting loaded in? Not sure where to go from there.
Things worth noting:- My graphics card is a RTX 2060
- My main monitor is DVI and my secondary portrait mode monitor is HDMI
- I'm running Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS with NVIDIA driver 440
- NVIDIA Settings seems to be bugged because when I make changes, apply those changes, update my xorg.conf (through the GUI) and then attempt to quit it throws a dialog informing me I have unsaved changed and asks me if I'm sure I want to quit. But if I manually inspect my xorg.conf in Vim it seems like the settings saved just fine.
- My Ubuntu display settings seem completely jacked up. Like settiing any rotation in that UI at all causes the right monitor to totally turn off and both monitors to be spread on the middle monitor so I'm able to edge scroll like an RTS. Could be another clue.
Thanks in advance for any help or guidance

[SBFree]

Amazing. Just upgraded to 20.04 and using the NVIDIA driver 440 driver with one landscape and one portrait monitor. I have similar behavior. I hope someone has insights or suggestions for us.

[dakahn]

Hello, fellow suffering dual monitor user. Since it looks like help isn't coming I thought I'd post what I've subsequently found out.
https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/...n-file/70249/2

My sort of educated guess is that something about maybe where xserver/Ubuntu is looking for x configs doesn't sync up with where Nvidia put them? Honestly, as dramatic as it sounds, I'm at my wits end and might just jump ship to another distro that better supports my hardware.

[dakahn]

So I'm stubborn and refuse to admit defeat here. I've got some new clues I thought I'd share:

I happened to be updating a config file in my home directory and noticed a file named .nvidia-settings-rc which seems to simply load in a xinit config from some other part of my system.

So searching the name of that file led me to the Ubuntu manpage for nvidia-settings with this juicy tidbit from section 3

The NVIDIA X driver does not preserve values set with nvidia-settings between runs of the
X server (or even between logging in and logging out of X, with xdm(1), gdm, or kdm ).
This is intentional, because different users may have different preferences, thus these
settings are stored on a per-user basis in a configuration file stored in the user's home
directory.

The configuration file is named ~/.nvidia-settings-rc.
...
If you do not already have an ~/.xinitrc file, then chances are that xinit(1) is using a
system-wide xinitrc file. This system wide file is typically here:

/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

To use it, but also have nvidia-settings upload your settings, you could create an
~/.xinitrc with the contents:

nvidia-settings --load-config-only &
. /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

Uh, cool. So all this frustration experienced by seemingly hundreds of users for years and years is potentially caused by a feature and not a bug. Gnarly. Reading on it details steps to make your nvidia-settings persistent between sessions

After you have run nvidia-settings once and have generated a configuration file, you can
then run:

nvidia-settings --load-config-only
...
If you do not already have an ~/.xinitrc file, then chances are that xinit(1) is using a
system-wide xinitrc file. This system wide file is typically here:

/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

To use it, but also have nvidia-settings upload your settings, you could create an
~/.xinitrc with the contents:
nvidia-settings --load-config-only &
. /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

Following these steps doesn't work -- or seem to do anything for me. So my new question is what is .nvidia-settings-rc and how does it relate to xorg.conf? Is one derived from the other?

[CatKiller]

Bear in mind that I don't use Gnome and I don't use multiple monitors.

So my new question is what is .nvidia-settings-rc and how does it relate to xorg.conf?

It doesn't, really.

Xorg.conf sets up devices and their options during the startup process. Since automatic detection is mostly OK these days, it isn't strictly necessary unless there's some particular thing you need to change. These days you can use snippets in xorg.conf.d rather than putting everything into a single file. Also note that the automatically generated xorg.conf from Nvidia's configuration tool is hideous to attempt to read, and specifies a bunch of stuff that it doesn't need to.

Nvidia-settings-rc is a place to store the runtime settings for the nvidia driver. The nvidia Linux driver is in many ways the nvidia Windows driver made to work on Linux, so it does many things its own way relative to the rest of the graphics stack. As you've found, it doesn't automatically apply them again, so it's only marginally more convenient than specifying the options you want at the command line. It also doesn't store all the settings you can specify in the Nvidia configuration tool: overclocks won't be applied from that file, for example. It's pretty straightforward to load the settings from that file, or specify your own particular settings, when you log in, although the particular method may vary by desktop environment.

Desktop environments may also have their own methods for setting attributes for the display. Some of them will store those settings in ~/.config/monitors.xml.

You can also change monitor rotation attributes with xrandr, which interfaces with the XRandR (Resize and Rotate) extension to X11. Many of the other tools for configuring display attributes are actually using this extension. If you find a command that works for you, you could run that when you log in rather than working out which configuration file will give you the same effect.

[SBFree]

If I found a XRandR command that worked how would I make this run at login?
Thanks in advance for any thoughts.
scott

[SBFree]

My apologies for replying to my own post. The code:

xrandr --output HDMI-0 --rotate left

puts my second monitor into portrait but doesn't adjust it's relative position. It looks like getting this to run at login is described at :
https://askubuntu.com/questions/2700...mmand-at-login

[CatKiller]

If I found a XRandR command that worked how would I make this run at login?

Most desktop environments have a setting for automatically running things when you log in.

[dakahn]

Yeah, I went the same route myself with just manually running an Xrandr script at startup.
xrandr --output HDMI-0 --rotate left --pos 1920x-420

Rotates my second monitor left and then positions it down 420px so it's centered relative to my main monitor.

[SBFree]

Did you find a way to make this run at login? I tried adding to the end of ~/.profile but it did not work.