gnome-display-properties only allowing cloned screens

[Diego Lima]

I have an Acer notebook with an Intel 945 video controller and I'm trying to use an external monitor attached to the notebook. Howerver it only seem to allow cloned screens.

I have tried opening gnome-display-properties, unchecking the "Clone Screens" checkbox, and when I do that the two screens (external monitor and my laptop monitor) show up. I click apply but nothing seem to happen. If I close gnome-display-properties and open it again the checkbox is once again marked.

[Erki Hallingu (erkiha)]

I have similar problem. When using dual screen setup with Intel 945, everything works as expected. gnome-display-properties shows two monitors. Now If I select "Clone Screens" checkbox screens are cloned, that is correct. But problem is that when I now deselect "Clone Screens", It does not change back to extended desktop setup. And gnome-display-properties also shows only one monitor.

Only by resetting ~/.gnome2/monitors.xml it is possible to go back to two monitors/extended desktop setup.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for your bug report, is your issue similar to bug #220563?

[Erki Hallingu (erkiha)]

it is related, but not exactly the same. I also had to manually edit xorg.conf to get it to work. Ubuntu's install and safe-mode configures xorg.conf wrong for my hardware (Fujitsu-Siemens S7110 with Intel 945GM), "vesa" and "i810" x drivers are used which do not work for dual screen setup. I used "intel" x driver manually in xorg.conf and it works correctly until you choose "Cloned Screens" from gnome-display-properties.

After that it is not possible to change it back to not cloned mode from gui. I can restore normal screen setup only by deleting ~/gnome2/monitors.xml and restarting X.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

what your describe seems to be rather xorg issues than a gnome-control-center bug

[Erki Hallingu (erkiha)]

First part of my previous comment is xorg realted, yes. But the thing that when I check "Clone Screens" in gnome-display-properties and when I later uncheck "Clone Screens" it does not restore the ~/gnome2/monitors.xml file to the state it was before. This is gnome-display-properties issue.

[Erki Hallingu (erkiha)]

Seems to be fixed now. Tested today (28.07.2008) with latest intrepid updates applied and found that it works OK. When deselecting cloned screen, now I get back extended desktop as expected. So consider this bug fixed.

[Erki Hallingu (erkiha)]

fixed