xorg laptop external monitor displays a pair of horizontal lines.

[Todd Morgan]

System: Toshiba M105-3041 laptop (1280x800 in display) with Acer AL2216W 22" widescreen monitor (1680x1050 max res). I use my Acer monitor as my main screen with the lid closed on the laptop.

In Ubuntu 7.04 everything on my system works consistently. When I run Ubuntu 7.10 either off the CD or off a hard drive install, my external monitor is detected however about 40 - 59% of the time there is a pair of thin horizontal lines that appear on the bottom half of the screen. These lines appear to be connected. When I move a window over one line, the other line shows the color and movement of the window. When starting x windows, the screen resolution is detected perfectly 100% of the time showing the beige screen with the mouse pointer. After GDM (HD install) is loaded or the desktop is displayed (LiveCD) the horizontal line appears. This problem happens whether I use the "intel" driver or the "i810" driver. The only way I can guaranty that these lines will not appear is to unplug the monitor and bootup with the built in LCD screen.

 I do NOT believe this is a hardware problem because this glitch NEVER happens when I am running Ubuntu 7.04. I've tried unplugging devices (ie mouse, external keyboard, etc) from my system to see if they have any effect. Even with just the monitor and the laptop alone this problem happens.

[Todd Morgan (tubatodd)]

I've observed the same pattern with Fedora 7 and 8 and I've posted a more detailed post on their forum. The post includes screenshots (mockups).

[url]http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=172106[/url]

Here's what the problem looks like....

[URL=http://img225.imageshack.us/my.php?image=loginscreenlinesnp0.png][IMG]http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/6946/loginscreenlinesnp0.th.png[/IMG][/URL]

[Todd Morgan (tubatodd)]

On second thought, perhaps I'm not describing my problem quite accurately (the mockup wasn't 100% accurate). Each of the lines on the screen appears to be acting as a miniature screen in itself. For example (using Kubuntu), if I click on the KDE menu, the menu covers where the left line is whereby the line on the right side of the screen shows a 1 pixel thick version of what is happening on the left side. The opposite is also true. If I put a picture or any other window on top of the line on the right, a 1 pixel thick view of that image appears in the left line.

Once again, this is a problem that has cropped up starting with version 7.10

[Jason Olson (jolso)]

I can confirm that I have the same issue. My system is an IBM think pad using the intel driver. Basically my issue is the same as tubatodd's. There are two strange lines that appear on the monitor, and what is really funny is that they can be moved around. The attached screen shot will show what the problem looks like. As a workaround to the problem if I just reboot my machine then the problem goes away. However if I suspend the system, and then wake the system back up, the problem is back in full force. The only way to get rid of it is to reboot the machine. Another point to mention is that this problem only shows up at resolution 1280X1024. No other resolution shows this issue. I need to use this resolution since my monitor works best at this resolution, and the fonts in Ubuntu are crystal clear here. Any other resolution and the fonts are fuzzy and I get a huge headache from the eye strain.

Jason

[David Tombs (dgtombs)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. Can you try with the latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

We're closing this bug since it is has been some time with no response from the original reporter. However, if the issue still exists please feel free to reopen with the requested information. Also, if you could, please test against the latest development version of Ubuntu, since this confirms the bug is one we may be able to pass upstream for help.