As I understand it, the situation is this: the 945GM hardware has two 'output drivers' ("CRTCs") for driving displays. When xrandr runs, it asks the driver for information on all connected displays, so the driver has to disconnect one of its CRTCs from your external monitor, and temporarily hook it up to the other available outputs in turn to see if there's a display connected to any of them. Once it's done, it hooks the CRTC back up to your external monitor and your display returns.
I'm using a MacBook with a 945GM chip, and I have four available outputs - LVDS (the internal panel), TMDS-1 (external DVI), VGA (external VGA) and TV. Of those, I'm always using LVDS and TMDS-1, and the VGA connector can detect that it's disconnected without having to start up a CRTC, therefore when I run xrandr on a stock install, my screen flashes black while it probes the TV output. I don't have a TV connected, and I never intend to, so what I did was modify my xorg.conf to tell it to pretend there's no TV output at all. First, I added a new top-level section: Section "Monitor" Identifier "DisabledMonitor" Option "Ignore" "true" EndSection The "Ignore" option means that any output connected to this monitor will be ignored. Then, I added an option to the "Device" section: Option "Monitor-TV" "DisabledMonitor" This connects the TV output to the output-disabling monitor section above. After making this change and logging out, running xrandr no longer causes black flashes (incidentally, black flashes caused by programs such as Totem that used XVideo are also gone). -- [i945gm] querying driver for supported resolutions makes screen flash https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/268387 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu-X, which is subscribed to xserver-xorg-video-intel in ubuntu. _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat Post to : ubuntu-x-swat@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp