Primary Display intermittently switches from external to notebook display

[David A. Kra]

warning: Package might be x-windows, gnome, or nvidia driver

Bug Behavior: When I step away from the computer or I KVM switch to another computer for several minutes, when I come back the internal display is now the primary. The symptom is that the gnome Applications, Places, Widgets and Notifications bar has shifted to the internal display. This did not happen with lucid 10.04. This did not happen initially with 12.04.

Remediation: Leave the "NVIDIA x Server Settings" program running. When the problem occurs, switch to the program, click "Make this the primary display for the X Screen" then click APPLY.

This differs from Bug #1080952 and from Bug #950194 in that this happens without any kind of restart or resumption or even screen blanking.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: metacity 1:2.34.1-1ubuntu11
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-34.53-generic-pae 3.2.33
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-34-generic-pae i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu15
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Dec 17 20:33:26 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release i386 (20120423)
MarkForUpload: True
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: metacity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)