Re: [ubuntu-uk] Screen resolution problems on dual-monitor setup
On Aug 11, 2011 9:19 PM, Colin Law clan...@googlemail.com wrote: On 11 August 2011 19:29, Liam Proven lpro...@gmail.com wrote: [...] For this reason, I position my smaller screen aligned with the top of my larger screen. That way, under Unity, I get the top panel/menu bar on both monitors, and there's nothing to fall off the bottom - unlike classic GNOME. Works rather better than classic GNOME, in fact. Once or twice I have accidentally dragged a desktop icon into the off screen area and had to move the screen down to find it again. In fact the system had a tendency to create icons in the offscreen area at one time, but that has not happened for a while so perhaps the code has been improved. I can see that would be highly irritating! I manged it in the GNOME 2 days but oddly not since. Sometimes you can lasso a group of icons including off-screen ones drag them all up a bit - agree a few tries, that aforesaid worked for me. - LP -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Screen resolution problems on dual-monitor setup
Thanks for all the input. Regarding bug reporting: One last thing then, since i had enough memory to run the resolutions but the advanced effects were messing up the presentation, is it worth filling a bug on this? From Jim I suspect there are already a number of bugs on this, but it is an issue which is difficult for the open source driver developers to address, as it can be different on different machines and they probably don't have access to every machine with ATI graphics. If you're not happy with the workarounds, do a search for similar bugs on Launchpad before you decide to file one. I almost always find an extremely similar one and subscribe to that rather than create a new one which someone then has to read, understand and maybe mark up as a duplicate. From Colin: That sounds like a good idea. Even if it does not get fixed the workaround will be recorded there for others to find. From Liam: You can do, but multi-monitor support is still a bit rough in a number of OSs. Given that I couldn't find much on launchpad and as a result of the specifics of my graphics card and the roughness of multi-monitor support, i have just posted the solution to the forums. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1821550. Hopefully this will mean that anyone else with the same issue will pick this up. j On 12 August 2011 11:04, Liam Proven lpro...@gmail.com wrote: On Aug 11, 2011 9:19 PM, Colin Law clan...@googlemail.com wrote: On 11 August 2011 19:29, Liam Proven lpro...@gmail.com wrote: [...] For this reason, I position my smaller screen aligned with the top of my larger screen. That way, under Unity, I get the top panel/menu bar on both monitors, and there's nothing to fall off the bottom - unlike classic GNOME. Works rather better than classic GNOME, in fact. Once or twice I have accidentally dragged a desktop icon into the off screen area and had to move the screen down to find it again. In fact the system had a tendency to create icons in the offscreen area at one time, but that has not happened for a while so perhaps the code has been improved. I can see that would be highly irritating! I manged it in the GNOME 2 days but oddly not since. Sometimes you can lasso a group of icons including off-screen ones drag them all up a bit - agree a few tries, that aforesaid worked for me. - LP -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/ -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Screen resolution problems on dual-monitor setup
Hi Jim and Colin,
Sorry about the delayed reply, my internet is down at home, being
fixed tomorrow.
Jim, the email you responded to was from a combination of Liam and I.
In response:
Can you tell us what model of laptop you have there, so I can google
for the graphics configuration it supports?
- Asus A6Rp; Asus A6 series entertainment notebook
- - Do you know if the spec of your Radeon 200m supports these
resolutions combined? I would guess it does, but I'm not sure without
googling it. Do you know if it uses its own memory or shares system
memory, and if so, how much?
- - - I am not sure, i came up with the following
http://www.amd.com/uk/products/notebook/chipsets/radeon-xpress-200M/Pages/ati-radeon-express-200m-amd-specs.aspx,
but don't know how to interpret most of it. Do you know if the
information you need is on this page.
I've had a chance to google now - it rather depends on how the
manufacturer implements the chipset. It supports sharing system memory
and its own memory as an option by the look of it. If it is using
shared memory, there should be a setting in the BIOS to set how much
it gets.
- I had a look in Bios but couldn't work out how to set any of this.
In the Bios the only seemingly relevant header was under 'Display' --
Dsiplaye Settings --- Video Devices. There the option was set to LCD
+ CRT, and the options were to set it to LCD only or CRT only.
Could you give me some idea of where i might look so that i can fiddle
with the memory settings?
One more things, from google i managed to find the following, i am not
sure if it is of any use:
lspci -v -s `lspci |grep VGA|awk {'print $1'} into the terminal returns:
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RC410 [Radeon
Xpress 200M] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1392
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 17
Memory at c000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
I/O ports at 9800 [size=256]
Memory at fe1f (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Expansion ROM at fe1c [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: access denied
Kernel driver in use: radeon
Kernel modules: radeon, radeonfb
Regarding Colin's suggestion:
This is the method I use to configure my laptop with an external
monitor (different graphics to the OP of course). The fact that this
appears to be working initially, but with odd effects, suggests to me
that you have successfully configured the system to use both monitors
in the different resolutions and that the problems you are seeing are
due to something else. I suspect that if you achieve the same results
by hand, so to speak, with one of the other methods, you may still run
into the strange after effects. Have you tried running the Classic
interface instead of Unity? Also try switching off special effects.
This may throw light on the cause of the problem.
- The problem persists even in the classic desktop. That said, what
would be the settings, in Natty, for no desktop effects? I ask as that
option has been removed from the 'Appearance' application. All the
desktop effects are now set through CCSM now, i think. As such what
would be the CCSM settings for no advanced effects?
Thanks for all the advice,
j
On 10 August 2011 18:41, Jim Price d1vers...@hotmail.com wrote:
I think something is up with the attributions here - thunderbird and gmane
are telling me this post is from Liam, but I think it may have been said by
some combination of Liam and James, or just James:
On 10/08/11 15:13, Liam Proven wrote:
On 10 August 2011 14:37, James Morrisseymorrissey.jam...@gmail.com
wrote:
- - Do you know if the spec of your Radeon 200m supports these
resolutions combined? I would guess it does, but I'm not sure without
googling it. Do you know if it uses its own memory or shares system
memory, and if so, how much?
- - - I am not sure, i came up with the following
http://www.amd.com/uk/products/notebook/chipsets/radeon-xpress-200M/Pages/ati-radeon-express-200m-amd-specs.aspx,
but don't know how to interpret most of it. Do you know if the
information you need is on this page.
I've had a chance to google now - it rather depends on how the manufacturer
implements the chipset. It supports sharing system memory and its own memory
as an option by the look of it. If it is using shared memory, there should
be a setting in the BIOS to set how much it gets.
Try changing resolution on one of the monitors in
~/.config/monitors.xml, which is where i got the unity dock to only
show on the primary monitor.
Here, after i saved the changes to ~/.config/monitors.xml, and logged
out, i got an error message saying �that the resolution would not work
as i logged in.
- -What was the exact error message you got?
- - - When i first did this and got the error message, i had only
changed the resolution on the laptop
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Screen resolution problems on dual-monitor setup
Hi James,
On 11/08/11 10:14, James Morrissey wrote:
- Asus A6Rp; Asus A6 series entertainment notebook
Rats - the ASUS page with the spec on it isn't working in Firefox or
Chromium...
It should be here:
http://support.asus.com/knowledge.aspx?SLanguage=enp=3s=41m=A6Rpos=hashedid=aHR4WKHzgC0UPCGP
but the link doesn't work.
- I had a look in Bios but couldn't work out how to set any of this.
In the Bios the only seemingly relevant header was under 'Display' --
Dsiplaye Settings --- Video Devices. There the option was set to LCD
+ CRT, and the options were to set it to LCD only or CRT only.
Best leave that alone then.
Could you give me some idea of where i might look so that i can fiddle
with the memory settings?
I would expect that if there is a setting for it, it would be labelled
something like Graphics UMA shared memory, but the BIOS is not bound
to have that setting - it depends on how Asus designed the machine.
One more things, from google i managed to find the following, i am not
sure if it is of any use:
lspci -v -s `lspci |grep VGA|awk {'print $1'} into the terminal returns:
Good stuff - I was going to suggest something similar.
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RC410 [Radeon
Xpress 200M] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1392
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 17
Memory at c000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
I/O ports at 9800 [size=256]
Memory at fe1f (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Expansion ROM at fe1c [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities:access denied
Kernel driver in use: radeon
Kernel modules: radeon, radeonfb
OK, looks like it is using 256MB memory, so there is no problem with the
amount of video memory for the resolutions you are trying to get.
Regarding Colin's suggestion:
This is the method I use to configure my laptop with an external
monitor (different graphics to the OP of course). The fact that this
appears to be working initially, but with odd effects, suggests to me
that you have successfully configured the system to use both monitors
in the different resolutions and that the problems you are seeing are
due to something else. I suspect that if you achieve the same results
by hand, so to speak, with one of the other methods, you may still run
into the strange after effects. Have you tried running the Classic
interface instead of Unity? Also try switching off special effects.
This may throw light on the cause of the problem.
- The problem persists even in the classic desktop. That said, what
would be the settings, in Natty, for no desktop effects?
It should be possible to select something like GNOME desktop - no
effects as you login. Once you've selected your login name, check the
bottom of the scree for a dropdown box which allows you to select that
option (or similar). I've seen the borderless windows effect on several
ATI graphics cards when desktop effects are enabled, and turning them
off like that frees up graphics resources and usually makes things work
properly.
I ask as that
option has been removed from the 'Appearance' application. All the
desktop effects are now set through CCSM now, i think. As such what
would be the CCSM settings for no advanced effects?
Thanks for all the advice,
--
ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Screen resolution problems on dual-monitor setup
So Colin's suggestion worked!
Once i logged in with Ubuntu classic desktop (no effects) i could set
the resolution i wanted (via monitor preferences) and everything
works. I am somewhat embarrassed that i didn't see that option when i
first tried this.
The only issue i am left with now is that screen size appears to be
taken from the larger 19 monitor. This means that the mouse can fall
off the top or bottom (or both) of the smaller monitor, depending on
where i position the smaller monitor in relation to the larger one
(again, in 'monitor preferences'). This isn't much of an issue however
as the GNOME menus bound the size to which applications maximise in
the smaller monitor. So i am happy to live with this.
One last thing then, since i had enough memory to run the resolutions
but the advanced effects were messing up the presentation, is it worth
filling a bug on this?
Thanks again, for all the help.
j
On 11 August 2011 11:52, Jim Price d1vers...@hotmail.com wrote:
Hi James,
On 11/08/11 10:14, James Morrissey wrote:
- Asus A6Rp; Asus A6 series entertainment notebook
Rats - the ASUS page with the spec on it isn't working in Firefox or
Chromium...
It should be here:
http://support.asus.com/knowledge.aspx?SLanguage=enp=3s=41m=A6Rpos=hashedid=aHR4WKHzgC0UPCGP
but the link doesn't work.
- I had a look in Bios but couldn't work out how to set any of this.
In the Bios the only seemingly relevant header was under 'Display' --
Dsiplaye Settings --- Video Devices. There the option was set to LCD
+ CRT, and the options were to set it to LCD only or CRT only.
Best leave that alone then.
Could you give me some idea of where i might look so that i can fiddle
with the memory settings?
I would expect that if there is a setting for it, it would be labelled
something like Graphics UMA shared memory, but the BIOS is not bound to
have that setting - it depends on how Asus designed the machine.
One more things, from google i managed to find the following, i am not
sure if it is of any use:
lspci -v -s `lspci |grep VGA|awk {'print $1'} into the terminal returns:
Good stuff - I was going to suggest something similar.
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RC410 [Radeon
Xpress 200M] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1392
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 17
Memory at c000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
I/O ports at 9800 [size=256]
Memory at fe1f (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Expansion ROM at fe1c [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities:access denied
Kernel driver in use: radeon
Kernel modules: radeon, radeonfb
OK, looks like it is using 256MB memory, so there is no problem with the
amount of video memory for the resolutions you are trying to get.
Regarding Colin's suggestion:
This is the method I use to configure my laptop with an external
monitor (different graphics to the OP of course). The fact that this
appears to be working initially, but with odd effects, suggests to me
that you have successfully configured the system to use both monitors
in the different resolutions and that the problems you are seeing are
due to something else. I suspect that if you achieve the same results
by hand, so to speak, with one of the other methods, you may still run
into the strange after effects. Have you tried running the Classic
interface instead of Unity? Also try switching off special effects.
This may throw light on the cause of the problem.
- The problem persists even in the classic desktop. That said, what
would be the settings, in Natty, for no desktop effects?
It should be possible to select something like GNOME desktop - no effects
as you login. Once you've selected your login name, check the bottom of the
scree for a dropdown box which allows you to select that option (or
similar). I've seen the borderless windows effect on several ATI graphics
cards when desktop effects are enabled, and turning them off like that frees
up graphics resources and usually makes things work properly.
I ask as that
option has been removed from the 'Appearance' application. All the
desktop effects are now set through CCSM now, i think. As such what
would be the CCSM settings for no advanced effects?
Thanks for all the advice,
--
ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
--
ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Screen resolution problems on dual-monitor setup
On 11/08/11 12:13, James Morrissey wrote: So Colin's suggestion worked! Once i logged in with Ubuntu classic desktop (no effects) i could set the resolution i wanted (via monitor preferences) and everything works. I am somewhat embarrassed that i didn't see that option when i first tried this. The only issue i am left with now is that screen size appears to be taken from the larger 19 monitor. This means that the mouse can fall off the top or bottom (or both) of the smaller monitor, depending on where i position the smaller monitor in relation to the larger one (again, in 'monitor preferences'). This isn't much of an issue however as the GNOME menus bound the size to which applications maximise in the smaller monitor. So i am happy to live with this. If you want to use a cloned display, so that you have the same GNOME menus on both screens, I think you'll be stuck with that. If you now try using the systempreferencesmonitors dialog to uncheck the clone displays checkbox and resize the monitors to fit, you should get the right resolution on both and a GNOME menu on one. If you see display corruption on the screen on one or both monitors, you won't be able to use this mode, and may need a hard reset (switch it off and on again) to clear the corruption. One last thing then, since i had enough memory to run the resolutions but the advanced effects were messing up the presentation, is it worth filling a bug on this? I suspect there are already a number of bugs on this, but it is an issue which is difficult for the open source driver developers to address, as it can be different on different machines and they probably don't have access to every machine with ATI graphics. If you're not happy with the workarounds, do a search for similar bugs on Launchpad before you decide to file one. I almost always find an extremely similar one and subscribe to that rather than create a new one which someone then has to read, understand and maybe mark up as a duplicate. Thanks again, for all the help. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Screen resolution problems on dual-monitor setup
On 11 August 2011 12:13, James Morrissey morrissey.jam...@gmail.com wrote: So Colin's suggestion worked! Wow, amazing. Apparently a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is not always true. Once i logged in with Ubuntu classic desktop (no effects) i could set the resolution i wanted (via monitor preferences) and everything works. I am somewhat embarrassed that i didn't see that option when i first tried this. I imagine you would also have trouble with the Unity interface if you tried it. If you install unity-2d however then that may well work ok. The only issue i am left with now is that screen size appears to be taken from the larger 19 monitor. This means that the mouse can fall off the top or bottom (or both) of the smaller monitor, depending on where i position the smaller monitor in relation to the larger one (again, in 'monitor preferences'). This isn't much of an issue however as the GNOME menus bound the size to which applications maximise in the smaller monitor. So i am happy to live with this. I think that is a fact of life if your actual screens do not fill the total virtual screen area. There will be bits of the virtual area that things can get lost in. One last thing then, since i had enough memory to run the resolutions but the advanced effects were messing up the presentation, is it worth filling a bug on this? That sounds like a good idea. Even if it does not get fixed the workaround will be recorded there for others to find. Colin -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Screen resolution problems on dual-monitor setup
On 11 August 2011 12:13, James Morrissey morrissey.jam...@gmail.com wrote: So Colin's suggestion worked! :¬) Excellent! Once i logged in with Ubuntu classic desktop (no effects) i could set the resolution i wanted (via monitor preferences) and everything works. I am somewhat embarrassed that i didn't see that option when i first tried this. Don't worry - we all overlook things sometimes. Especially after one has been trying for ages. The only issue i am left with now is that screen size appears to be taken from the larger 19 monitor. This means that the mouse can fall off the top or bottom (or both) of the smaller monitor, depending on where i position the smaller monitor in relation to the larger one (again, in 'monitor preferences'). This isn't much of an issue however as the GNOME menus bound the size to which applications maximise in the smaller monitor. So i am happy to live with this. For this reason, I position my smaller screen aligned with the top of my larger screen. That way, under Unity, I get the top panel/menu bar on both monitors, and there's nothing to fall off the bottom - unlike classic GNOME. Works rather better than classic GNOME, in fact. One last thing then, since i had enough memory to run the resolutions but the advanced effects were messing up the presentation, is it worth filling a bug on this? You can do, but multi-monitor support is still a bit rough in a number of OSs. Thanks again, for all the help. For my meagre part, you are very welcome. :¬) -- Liam Proven • Info profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lpro...@gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 • Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AIM/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven • MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • ICQ: 73187508 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Screen resolution problems on dual-monitor setup
On 10 August 2011 18:41, Jim Price d1vers...@hotmail.com wrote: I think something is up with the attributions here - thunderbird and gmane are telling me this post is from Liam, but I think it may have been said by some combination of Liam and James, or just James: Odd. You replied a bit to both of us. :¬) The next bit sounds like it might be attributable to Liam? Or not? Aha! That is interesting. I will say that on my old Thinkpad, to use multiple monitors at all, I have to drop all the screens down to 16-bit colour. (Either 65,535 or 32,768 colours, it makes no real difference. Most 16-bit colour modes are actually 15-bit colour: 5 bits for R, G B.) On Windows I have to do this manually, by setting both screens, individually, to 32K colours - *then* changing resolutions. The Thinkpad only has 16MB of video RAM, which limits it to 2 screens at 1024*768 in 24-bit colour. In 16-bit colour, I can run 1024*768 + 1280*1024. On Ubuntu, there is no UI for changing colour depth, so I use the xorg.conf file I documented in my blog. You might want to try this if your machine is of a similar age. Yes, that was me. I'm thinking checking the amount of memory allocated to the graphics in the BIOS might be worth doing. For X to have enough memory for both displays at 32bit colour, you would need ~75MB, although the settings are likely to be in power-of-two increments, so you might need to set it to 128MB shared memory as the next highest setting. FWIW, on my Thinkpad, you can't - it has 16MB of physical VRAM and that's it. The symptom of VRAM starvation, just for the record, is that the dialogs /show/ higher resolutions (e.g. 1024*768 + 1280*1024) but if you try to select the higher ones, you actually get a lower one, such as 2 x 1024*768. There are no proprietary ATI drivers for my Mobility Radeon chipset - it's too old. That's what I suspected. Can you tell us what model of laptop you have there, so I can google for the graphics configuration it supports? That was me, but FWIW, it's an IBM Thinkpad X31. http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:X31 http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ATI_Mobility_Radeon_7000 -- Liam Proven • Info profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lpro...@gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 • Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AIM/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven • MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • ICQ: 73187508 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Screen resolution problems on dual-monitor setup
On 11 August 2011 19:29, Liam Proven lpro...@gmail.com wrote: [...] For this reason, I position my smaller screen aligned with the top of my larger screen. That way, under Unity, I get the top panel/menu bar on both monitors, and there's nothing to fall off the bottom - unlike classic GNOME. Works rather better than classic GNOME, in fact. Once or twice I have accidentally dragged a desktop icon into the off screen area and had to move the screen down to find it again. In fact the system had a tendency to create icons in the offscreen area at one time, but that has not happened for a while so perhaps the code has been improved. Colin -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Screen resolution problems on dual-monitor setup
On 10/08/11 12:00, James Morrissey wrote: Hi all, I posted this on the forums yesterday, but haven't had much luck. I was wondering if anyone here could help. I am trying to set up dual monitors in Ubuntu, with the two monitors having different resolutions. One monitor is on my laptop and the other is an external monitor. I have an ATI Radeon express 200m doing the graphics. That probably means you have to use the ATI open source driver IIRC. For the two monitors i would like to have one showing at 1280x800 and the other at 1280x1024. At the moment the resolution has defaulted to 1024x768. Do you know if the spec of your Radeon 200m supports these resolutions combined? I would guess it does, but I'm not sure without googling it. Do you know if it uses its own memory or shares system memory, and if so, how much? I have seen a number of threads detailing this problem, but none seem to solve my issue. Here is a run down of how far i have gotten on different fronts. 1. Talks about editing xorg.conf. - The problem here is that i don't seem to have an xorg.conf file in /usr/share/X11. When I locate xorg.conf in the terminal i get: /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/11-evdev-quirks.conf /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-vmmouse.conf /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-wacom.conf /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/51-synaptics-quirks.conf /usr/share/doc/xserver-xorg-video-nouveau/examples/xorg.conf /usr/share/man/man5/xorg.conf.5.gz As such i am not sure which file to try and edit. Leave those alone for now. 2. Try changing resolution on one of the monitors in ~/.config/monitors.xml, which is where i got the unity dock to only show on the primary monitor. - Here, after i saved the changes to ~/.config/monitors.xml, and logged out, i got an error message saying that the resolution would not work as i logged in. What was the exact error message you got? Can you post the monitors.conf you have at the moment? Both monitors then came up as they were initially. When i looked at ~/.config/monitors.xml, i saw that the resolutions had reverted back to what they were originally. 3. Talks about editing xrandr, linking to this page http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-change...ng-xrandr.html - This looks incredibly intimidating and i can't really work out what to do in my case. Any advice would be much appreciated. xrandr isn't as complicated as the documentation makes it look. If you want more advice on this option you will need to state which version of Ubuntu you are using though, as it has changed a bit over the last few years. 4. I think is a GUI method for the solution offered by 3 (above). This involves trying to 'configure display settings' in 'monitor preferences'. Here i can change the resolution of each monitor quite easily. This works and the resolution is perfect. The problem though is once i have set the resolution to what i want for both monitors, they begin to behave strangely. Most notable is that when i close things they don't disappear off the screen (although they appear to have closed), the unity dock smears on the screen when it minimizes and mouse pointer labels show up and then don't disappear. I think you would need to create an xorg.conf to use this method, as it would need the total X screen area defined in order to work. So i am now stumped. If anyone can tell me either how to sort the resolution, interpret the xrandr instructions or fix the screen smearing i would be very grateful. I'm up for having a go at bouncing a few ideas around. I think your option 4 is probably the one to start with, although I think it will involve a certain amount of overlap with option one. I've used xrandr, and it might be useful, but option 4 would be needed too as xrandr will not help you have two monitors showing different parts of the same desktop (which is what you will have to do if you want different resolutions on each screen - if you want cloned screens, you need the same resolution on each). First I need to know what version of Ubuntu you are running, as there are differences between them, and I like to post stuff which I can test in the same environment before I post it. Then we can start constructing a suitable xorg.conf. You also need to decide which of the two windows is going to have the (I assume) Gnome menus on it. -- JimP -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Screen resolution problems on dual-monitor setup
On 10 August 2011 12:00, James Morrissey morrissey.jam...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, I posted this on the forums yesterday, but haven't had much luck. I was wondering if anyone here could help. I am trying to set up dual monitors in Ubuntu, with the two monitors having different resolutions. One monitor is on my laptop and the other is an external monitor. I have an ATI Radeon express 200m doing the graphics. For the two monitors i would like to have one showing at 1280x800 and the other at 1280x1024. At the moment the resolution has defaulted to 1024x768. I have seen a number of threads detailing this problem, but none seem to solve my issue. Here is a run down of how far i have gotten on different fronts. 1. Talks about editing xorg.conf. - The problem here is that i don't seem to have an xorg.conf file in /usr/share/X11. When I locate xorg.conf in the terminal i get: /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/11-evdev-quirks.conf /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-vmmouse.conf /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-wacom.conf /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/51-synaptics-quirks.conf /usr/share/doc/xserver-xorg-video-nouveau/examples/xorg.conf /usr/share/man/man5/xorg.conf.5.gz As such i am not sure which file to try and edit. 2. Try changing resolution on one of the monitors in ~/.config/monitors.xml, which is where i got the unity dock to only show on the primary monitor. - Here, after i saved the changes to ~/.config/monitors.xml, and logged out, i got an error message saying that the resolution would not work as i logged in. Both monitors then came up as they were initially. When i looked at ~/.config/monitors.xml, i saw that the resolutions had reverted back to what they were originally. 3. Talks about editing xrandr, linking to this page http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-change...ng-xrandr.html - This looks incredibly intimidating and i can't really work out what to do in my case. Any advice would be much appreciated. 4. I think is a GUI method for the solution offered by 3 (above). This involves trying to 'configure display settings' in 'monitor preferences'. Here i can change the resolution of each monitor quite easily. This works and the resolution is perfect. The problem though is once i have set the resolution to what i want for both monitors, they begin to behave strangely. Most notable is that when i close things they don't disappear off the screen (although they appear to have closed), the unity dock smears on the screen when it minimizes and mouse pointer labels show up and then don't disappear. So i am now stumped. If anyone can tell me either how to sort the resolution, interpret the xrandr instructions or fix the screen smearing i would be very grateful. Thanks, Here's how to create a blank xorg.conf, from my blog, in case that helps: http://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/20637.html But first, try the ATI proprietary drivers. -- Liam Proven • Info profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lpro...@gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 • Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AIM/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven • MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • ICQ: 73187508 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Screen resolution problems on dual-monitor setup
On 10 August 2011 14:37, James Morrissey morrissey.jam...@gmail.com wrote: In response to your questions, please bear with me as i don't know a great deal about this stuff. For the two monitors i would like to have one showing at 1280x800 and the other at 1280x1024. At the moment the resolution has defaulted to 1024x768. - - Do you know if the spec of your Radeon 200m supports these resolutions combined? I would guess it does, but I'm not sure without googling it. Do you know if it uses its own memory or shares system memory, and if so, how much? - - - I am not sure, i came up with the following http://www.amd.com/uk/products/notebook/chipsets/radeon-xpress-200M/Pages/ati-radeon-express-200m-amd-specs.aspx, but don't know how to interpret most of it. Do you know if the information you need is on this page. Try changing resolution on one of the monitors in ~/.config/monitors.xml, which is where i got the unity dock to only show on the primary monitor. Here, after i saved the changes to ~/.config/monitors.xml, and logged out, i got an error message saying that the resolution would not work as i logged in. - -What was the exact error message you got? - - - When i first did this and got the error message, i had only changed the resolution on the laptop (to 1280x800). When i changed the resolution of both of these i got no error message. Instead i ended up with the same problem as i had when following step 4 from my last email: screen smear (images would remain in the screen after things had closed, or leave remnants when i dragged windows across the screen). - -Can you post the monitors.conf you have at the moment? - - - Which file exactly do you need for my monitors.conf. The ~/.config/monitors.xml, looks like this at the moment: monitors version=1 configuration cloneno/clone output name=VGA-0 vendorDEL/vendor product0x405a/product serial0x424d5653/serial width1024/width height768/height rate60/rate x1024/x y0/y rotationnormal/rotation reflect_xno/reflect_x reflect_yno/reflect_y primaryno/primary /output output name=LVDS vendorCMO/vendor product0x1516/product serial0x/serial width1024/width height768/height rate60/rate x0/x y0/y rotationnormal/rotation reflect_xno/reflect_x reflect_yno/reflect_y primaryyes/primary /output /configuration /monitors - - First I need to know what version of Ubuntu you are running, as there are differences between them, and I like to post stuff which I can test in the same environment before I post it. - - - Natty 11.04 - - You also need to decide which of the two windows is going to have the (I assume) Gnome menus on it - - - I initially had this problem, but found a blog post telling me to edit ~/.config/monitors.xml. In that file i changed primaryno/primary to primaryyes/primary in order to get the unity dock on the laptop monitor (LVDS), making it the primary monitor. Now the Gnome menus seem to work. i get the global menu showing only in the monitor in which the active programme is running. Liam Proven's blog page, just linked, describes my machine. A 6 year old Asus, which can no longer handle windows. Aha! That is interesting. I will say that on my old Thinkpad, to use multiple monitors at all, I have to drop all the screens down to 16-bit colour. (Either 65,535 or 32,768 colours, it makes no real difference. Most 16-bit colour modes are actually 15-bit colour: 5 bits for R, G B.) On Windows I have to do this manually, by setting both screens, individually, to 32K colours - *then* changing resolutions. The Thinkpad only has 16MB of video RAM, which limits it to 2 screens at 1024*768 in 24-bit colour. In 16-bit colour, I can run 1024*768 + 1280*1024. On Ubuntu, there is no UI for changing colour depth, so I use the xorg.conf file I documented in my blog. You might want to try this if your machine is of a similar age. There are no proprietary ATI drivers for my Mobility Radeon chipset - it's too old. -- Liam Proven • Info profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lpro...@gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 • Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AIM/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven • MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • ICQ: 73187508 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Screen resolution problems on dual-monitor setup
On 10 August 2011 12:00, James Morrissey morrissey.jam...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, I posted this on the forums yesterday, but haven't had much luck. I was wondering if anyone here could help. I am trying to set up dual monitors in Ubuntu, with the two monitors having different resolutions. One monitor is on my laptop and the other is an external monitor. I have an ATI Radeon express 200m doing the graphics. For the two monitors i would like to have one showing at 1280x800 and the other at 1280x1024. At the moment the resolution has defaulted to 1024x768. I have seen a number of threads detailing this problem, but none seem to solve my issue. Here is a run down of how far i have gotten on different fronts. [snip] 4. I think is a GUI method for the solution offered by 3 (above). This involves trying to 'configure display settings' in 'monitor preferences'. Here i can change the resolution of each monitor quite easily. This works and the resolution is perfect. The problem though is once i have set the resolution to what i want for both monitors, they begin to behave strangely. Most notable is that when i close things they don't disappear off the screen (although they appear to have closed), the unity dock smears on the screen when it minimizes and mouse pointer labels show up and then don't disappear. This is the method I use to configure my laptop with an external monitor (different graphics to the OP of course). The fact that this appears to be working initially, but with odd effects, suggests to me that you have successfully configured the system to use both monitors in the different resolutions and that the problems you are seeing are due to something else. I suspect that if you achieve the same results by hand, so to speak, with one of the other methods, you may still run into the strange after effects. Have you tried running the Classic interface instead of Unity? Also try switching off special effects. This may throw light on the cause of the problem. Not that I am an expert in this area so I may be spouting rubbish. Colin -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Screen resolution problems on dual-monitor setup
I think something is up with the attributions here - thunderbird and gmane are telling me this post is from Liam, but I think it may have been said by some combination of Liam and James, or just James: On 10/08/11 15:13, Liam Proven wrote: On 10 August 2011 14:37, James Morrisseymorrissey.jam...@gmail.com wrote: - - Do you know if the spec of your Radeon 200m supports these resolutions combined? I would guess it does, but I'm not sure without googling it. Do you know if it uses its own memory or shares system memory, and if so, how much? - - - I am not sure, i came up with the following http://www.amd.com/uk/products/notebook/chipsets/radeon-xpress-200M/Pages/ati-radeon-express-200m-amd-specs.aspx, but don't know how to interpret most of it. Do you know if the information you need is on this page. I've had a chance to google now - it rather depends on how the manufacturer implements the chipset. It supports sharing system memory and its own memory as an option by the look of it. If it is using shared memory, there should be a setting in the BIOS to set how much it gets. Try changing resolution on one of the monitors in ~/.config/monitors.xml, which is where i got the unity dock to only show on the primary monitor. Here, after i saved the changes to ~/.config/monitors.xml, and logged out, i got an error message saying �that the resolution would not work as i logged in. - -What was the exact error message you got? - - - When i first did this and got the error message, i had only changed the resolution on the laptop (to 1280x800). When i changed the resolution of both of these i got no error message. Instead i ended up with the same problem as i had when following step 4 from my last email: screen smear (images would remain in the screen after things had closed, or leave remnants when i dragged windows across the screen). It may have been an error to do with trying to get it to clone monitors at different resolutions - that just wouldn't work. - -Can you post the monitors.conf you have at the moment? - - - Which file exactly do you need for my monitors.conf. Sorry, typo alert. I should have typed monitors.xml but I was thinking xorg.conf. The ~/.config/monitors.xml, looks like this at the moment: snip config.xml for brevity - - First I need to know what version of Ubuntu you are running, as there are differences between them, and I like to post stuff which I can test in the same environment before I post it. - - - Natty 11.04 That's good - as I remember xrandr works pretty well in Natty. - - You also need to decide which of the two windows is going to have the (I assume) Gnome menus on it - - - I initially had this problem, but found a blog post telling me to edit �~/.config/monitors.xml. In that file i changed primaryno/primary to �primaryyes/primary in order to get the unity dock on the laptop monitor (LVDS), making it the primary monitor. Now the Gnome menus seem to work. i get the global menu showing only in the monitor in which the active programme is running. The other way is to move the monitor you want to be the primary to be to the left of the other one in the systempreferencesmonitors dialog. Liam Proven's blog page, just linked, describes my machine. A 6 year old Asus, which can no longer handle windows. The next bit sounds like it might be attributable to Liam? Or not? Aha! That is interesting. I will say that on my old Thinkpad, to use multiple monitors at all, I have to drop all the screens down to 16-bit colour. (Either 65,535 or 32,768 colours, it makes no real difference. Most 16-bit colour modes are actually 15-bit colour: 5 bits for R, G B.) On Windows I have to do this manually, by setting both screens, individually, to 32K colours - *then* changing resolutions. The Thinkpad only has 16MB of video RAM, which limits it to 2 screens at 1024*768 in 24-bit colour. In 16-bit colour, I can run 1024*768 + 1280*1024. On Ubuntu, there is no UI for changing colour depth, so I use the xorg.conf file I documented in my blog. You might want to try this if your machine is of a similar age. I'm thinking checking the amount of memory allocated to the graphics in the BIOS might be worth doing. For X to have enough memory for both displays at 32bit colour, you would need ~75MB, although the settings are likely to be in power-of-two increments, so you might need to set it to 128MB shared memory as the next highest setting. There are no proprietary ATI drivers for my Mobility Radeon chipset - it's too old. That's what I suspected. Can you tell us what model of laptop you have there, so I can google for the graphics configuration it supports? -- JimP -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
