Bug 464022 – gnome-base/gdm-3.8 overrides display setup in xorg.conf and changes monitor arrangement

• Status: RESOLVED FIXED
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Harris Landgarten 2013-03-31 22:56:28 UTC]

Created attachment 343872 [details]
Xorg.0.log

I run a system with 4 monitors on 1 nvidia gpu. I combine them into a single screen using nvidia twinview. I have the monitor arrangement and primary monitor defined in xorg.conf.

When GDM starts via /etc/init.d/xdm start it take a long time to display signon and then changes to metamode so that the monitors are arranged in order with dfp-0 being primary.

I have the following order defined:

DPF-0, DFP-2, DFP-3, DFP-1 with DFP-3 primary

I end up with:

DFP-0, DFP-1, DFP-2, DFP-3 with DFP-0 primary.

I am attaching Xorg.0.log and xorg.conf

The change of metamode can be seen in Xorg.0.log

After signon, I change the monitor arrangement and primary monitor with nvidia-settings and all is fine for the rest of the session including restarts of gnome-shell.

[Comment 1 Harris Landgarten 2013-03-31 22:57:10 UTC]

Created attachment 343874 [details]
xorg.conf

[Comment 2 Pacho Ramos 2013-04-07 11:43:06 UTC]

I would send this directly to upstream:
bugzilla.gnome.org

and post link here for tracking

[Comment 3 poncho 2013-04-07 12:05:26 UTC]

gdm-3.8 uses xrandr to setup the monitors.

Try to configure your displays with 'gnome-control-center display' and copy ~/.config/monitors.xml to /etc/gnome-settings-daemon/xrandr/monitors.xml

[Comment 4 Harris Landgarten 2013-04-07 20:30:21 UTC]

Thanks that works around the problem. What do you think should be done to get in sync with nvidia-settings?

[Comment 5 poncho 2013-04-17 10:49:26 UTC]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Thanks that works around the problem. What do you think should be done to
> get in sync with nvidia-settings?

I don't use nvidia-settings any more.

I think nvidia-settings was a workaround for the nvidia-drivers not supporting xrandr...

[Comment 6 Tom Wijsman (TomWij) (RETIRED) 2013-08-13 17:25:59 UTC]

(In reply to poncho from comment #3)
> gdm-3.8 uses xrandr to setup the monitors.
> 
> Try to configure your displays with 'gnome-control-center display' and copy
> ~/.config/monitors.xml to /etc/gnome-settings-daemon/xrandr/monitors.xml

Oh, wasn't aware of this; I basically figured out reading the g-s-d source code, could we perhaps document this somewhere? Or is it documented?

[Comment 7 Pacho Ramos 2013-08-13 18:55:20 UTC]

This idea was to include that information in upgrade guide (that is the reason this bug is blocking the documentation one), but haven't had time to work on upgrade guide yet :'(

[Comment 8 poncho 2013-08-13 20:41:59 UTC]

(In reply to Tom Wijsman (TomWij) from comment #6)
> Oh, wasn't aware of this; I basically figured out reading the g-s-d source
> code [...
]
I found it while browsing the settings with dconf-editor:

gsettings get org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xrandr default-configuration-file
'/etc/gnome-settings-daemon/xrandr/monitors.xml'

[Comment 9 Pacho Ramos 2013-08-18 11:35:29 UTC]

done