[i965] Incorrectly detects screen resolution of Samsung 225BW in dual-monitor setup

[Tom Haddon]

Binary package hint: xorg

I have a Samsung 225 BW external monitor with resolution of 1680x1050. If I plug the monitor in after logging into Gnome and run "Display" from "System -> Preferences" it only gives me the option of displaying up to 1280x1024. If I start my computer with the monitor plugged in, it only gives me the option of a resolution up to 1024x768.

In Intrepid, the first of these issues was also the case, but if I started my laptop with the external monitor already plugged in, it would detect the available resolutions correctly and by default would use the correct 1680x1050 display.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: xorg 1:7.4~5ubuntu16
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersion: Linux version 2.6.28-11-generic (buildd@rothera) (gcc version 4.3.3 (Ubuntu 4.3.3-5ubuntu4) ) #36-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 20 19:40:40 UTC 2009
SourcePackage: xorg
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic i686

[lspci]
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub [8086:2a00] (rev 0c)
     Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:01f3]
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a02] (rev 0c)
     Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:01f3]

[Geir Ove Myhr (gomyhr)]

I see this in you XorgLog.gz: (in the EDID information for the VGA connection)

[ 2810.719131] (II) intel(0): EDID vendor "SAM", prod id 596
[ 2810.719137] (II) intel(0): EDID quirk: Detailed timing is not preferred, use largest mode at 60Hz
[ 2810.719180] (II) intel(0): Not using mode "1680x1050" (width too large for virtual size)
[ 2810.719188] (II) intel(0): Not using mode "1680x1050" (width too large for virtual size)

So it apparently wants to set the 1680x1050 mode first, but doesn't because the desktop virtual size is too small. This looks like bug 220563 which was supposed to not be a problem anymore.

If you're having the monitors side-by-side you would need a virtual width of at least 1680+1280=2960. Can you try if either of the following works:
1. Add the these lines to the "Screen" section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
SubSection "Display"
  Depth 24
  Virtual 3000 1200
EndSubSection
2. In System -> Preferences -> Display, place the external monitor above or below laptop monitor. This should make a virtual height of 1050+800 = 1850, which I think it is by default (I think it is 2048x2048).

[Tom Haddon (mthaddon)]

This almost works. I am able to set the display correctly, and everything works fine. However, when I close the lid on my laptop (I want the external display only), the screen on my external monitor goes black. This is normal behaviour and is what happened in my "interpid" setup. However, when I try moving the mouse, or using the keyboard I'd expect the screen on the monitor to be restored. Instead it stays black and the only way I can restore the screen is to open the lid on the laptop (at which point the screen shows on there too and it reverts to a mirrored screen setup even though that's not what I've asked for.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Tom, since the original issue is resolved, I'm recasting this bug to the blanking behavior when the lid is closed.

Coming back as mirrored rather than as you configured is probably a separate issue, we won't be focusing on that here so you may want to file that separately. It is probably rather an issue with GNOME's display tool not knowing it should re-apply the settings in this situation. If you'd like that issue investigated as well, I'd ask you file that as a new bug.

[Geir Ove Myhr (gomyhr)]

> Tom, since the original issue is resolved, I'm recasting this bug to the
> blanking behavior when the lid is closed.

Bryce, isn't dual head supposed to work without the user having to add
virtual desktop size to xorg.conf? C.f. bug 220563 and bug 275977
which are marked as 'Fix Released'.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 10:12:37PM -0000, Geir Ove Myhr wrote:
> > Tom, since the original issue is resolved, I'm recasting this bug to the
> > blanking behavior when the lid is closed.
>
> Bryce, isn't dual head supposed to work without the user having to add
> virtual desktop size to xorg.conf? C.f. bug 220563 and bug 275977
> which are marked as 'Fix Released'.

No, not yet.

[Tom Haddon (mthaddon)]

On Mon, 2009-03-30 at 03:14 +0000, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 10:12:37PM -0000, Geir Ove Myhr wrote:
> > > Tom, since the original issue is resolved, I'm recasting this bug to the
> > > blanking behavior when the lid is closed.
> >
> > Bryce, isn't dual head supposed to work without the user having to add
> > virtual desktop size to xorg.conf? C.f. bug 220563 and bug 275977
> > which are marked as 'Fix Released'.
>
> No, not yet.
>

I'm a little confused - both of those bugs talk about things being fixed
in Interpid, but I didn't get any notification about needing to adjust
the "Virtual" setting by g-c-c. Could you clarify what you mean by "no,
not yet"? Do you mean Xorg in Jaunty should do this but doesn't (if so
is there a bug report, or should we file one), or that the version of
Xorg in Jaunty isn't even supposed to do this yet?

[Tom Haddon (mthaddon)]

On Sun, 2009-03-29 at 21:25 +0000, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> Tom, since the original issue is resolved,

I don't consider the original issue resolved. It still doesn't detect
the resolution correctly. I have to open the "System -> Preferences ->
Display" and manually set it to 1680x1050 even after adding the
"Virtual" setting in my Xorg.conf.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 04:39:38AM -0000, Tom Haddon wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-03-29 at 21:25 +0000, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> > Tom, since the original issue is resolved,
>
> I don't consider the original issue resolved. It still doesn't detect
> the resolution correctly. I have to open the "System -> Preferences ->
> Display" and manually set it to 1680x1050 even after adding the
> "Virtual" setting in my Xorg.conf.

That's perhaps just due to your gnome-display-properties config file
hardcoding the old resolution. Try getting rid of your
~/.config/monitors.xml and boot. It should come up fine.

Tom, I'd encourage you to file separate bug reports for separate issues.
This is because oftentimes what may seem like the same general problem
("Ubuntu isn't setting up my monitors properly") can be a result of
multiple bugs, often between several different packages (video driver,
gnome-control-center, etc.) and having multiple issues being tracked in
one bug report gets confusing, and makes it hard to determine which of
the issues have been resolved and which still need attention, as you
see.

Bryce

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 04:37:18AM -0000, Tom Haddon wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-03-30 at 03:14 +0000, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> > On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 10:12:37PM -0000, Geir Ove Myhr wrote:
> > > > Tom, since the original issue is resolved, I'm recasting this bug to the
> > > > blanking behavior when the lid is closed.
> > >
> > > Bryce, isn't dual head supposed to work without the user having to add
> > > virtual desktop size to xorg.conf? C.f. bug 220563 and bug 275977
> > > which are marked as 'Fix Released'.
> >
> > No, not yet.
> >
>
> I'm a little confused - both of those bugs talk about things being fixed
> in Interpid, but I didn't get any notification about needing to adjust
     ^Intrepid btw ;-)

> the "Virtual" setting by g-c-c. Could you clarify what you mean by "no,
> not yet"? Do you mean Xorg in Jaunty should do this but doesn't (if so
> is there a bug report, or should we file one), or that the version of
> Xorg in Jaunty isn't even supposed to do this yet?

It is not supposed to do this yet. Kernel modesetting is one of the
prerequisites to this, but we won't be enabling that until Karmic.
So for the time being, Virtual is still required in order to set up
multi-head.

Bryce

[Tom Haddon (mthaddon)]

On Mon, 2009-03-30 at 17:33 +0000, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 04:37:18AM -0000, Tom Haddon wrote:
> > On Mon, 2009-03-30 at 03:14 +0000, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> > > On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 10:12:37PM -0000, Geir Ove Myhr wrote:
> > > > > Tom, since the original issue is resolved, I'm recasting this bug to the
> > > > > blanking behavior when the lid is closed.
> > > >
> > > > Bryce, isn't dual head supposed to work without the user having to add
> > > > virtual desktop size to xorg.conf? C.f. bug 220563 and bug 275977
> > > > which are marked as 'Fix Released'.
> > >
> > > No, not yet.
> > >
> >
> > I'm a little confused - both of those bugs talk about things being fixed
> > in Interpid, but I didn't get any notification about needing to adjust
> ^Intrepid btw ;-)
>
> > the "Virtual" setting by g-c-c. Could you clarify what you mean by "no,
> > not yet"? Do you mean Xorg in Jaunty should do this but doesn't (if so
> > is there a bug report, or should we file one), or that the version of
> > Xorg in Jaunty isn't even supposed to do this yet?
>
> It is not supposed to do this yet. Kernel modesetting is one of the
> prerequisites to this, but we won't be enabling that until Karmic.
> So for the time being, Virtual is still required in order to set up
> multi-head.

Ok, thanks

[Tom Haddon (mthaddon)]

On Mon, 2009-03-30 at 17:23 +0000, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 04:39:38AM -0000, Tom Haddon wrote:
> > On Sun, 2009-03-29 at 21:25 +0000, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> > > Tom, since the original issue is resolved,
> >
> > I don't consider the original issue resolved. It still doesn't detect
> > the resolution correctly. I have to open the "System -> Preferences ->
> > Display" and manually set it to 1680x1050 even after adding the
> > "Virtual" setting in my Xorg.conf.
>
> That's perhaps just due to your gnome-display-properties config file
> hardcoding the old resolution. Try getting rid of your
> ~/.config/monitors.xml and boot. It should come up fine.

I removed my ~/.config/monitors.xml and rebooted with my external
monitor connected, and the laptop lid open (there's no output to the
exernal monitor during boot, so I have to have it open). At the gdm
login screen, the configuration is mirrored at 1024x768 on both my
laptop (native resolution 1280x800, with black bars on either side for
the unused space), and on the external monitor (1680x1050 native
resolution - stretched across the screen.

>
> Tom, I'd encourage you to file separate bug reports for separate issues.
> This is because oftentimes what may seem like the same general problem
> ("Ubuntu isn't setting up my monitors properly") can be a result of
> multiple bugs, often between several different packages (video driver,
> gnome-control-center, etc.) and having multiple issues being tracked in
> one bug report gets confusing, and makes it hard to determine which of
> the issues have been resolved and which still need attention, as you
> see.

Happy to file separate bugs - will do for the issue of not keeping
configuration on closing the laptop lid.

Thanks, Tom

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

The lid close / blanking issue is bug 352136. Is there still a separate problem described in this report, or is it obsolete?

[Tom Haddon (mthaddon)]

I believe there's still a valid issue here. Even after adding the "Virtual" stanza to my Xorg.conf, and removing ~/.config/monitors.xml as above, I'm still seeing incorrect resolutions on laptop and external monitors initially:

"I removed my ~/.config/monitors.xml and rebooted with my external
monitor connected, and the laptop lid open (there's no output to the
exernal monitor during boot, so I have to have it open). At the gdm
login screen, the configuration is mirrored at 1024x768 on both my
laptop (native resolution 1280x800, with black bars on either side for
the unused space), and on the external monitor (1680x1050 native
resolution - stretched across the screen."

[Tom Haddon (mthaddon)]

As an update, if I start the laptop with the lid closed and the external monitor attached, it does detect the external monitor resolution correctly after I've logged into gdm. The resolution at gdm isn't correct, but once I've logged in it's fine. Not sure if that means this can be marked invalid or not.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Well, next I'd like to forward this issue upstream, but first it must be retested on latest development version of Karmic to make sure the issue still happens there with the latest code. ISO images are available at http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/releases/karmic/. If you can reproduce it in the LiveCD environment, you shouldn't need to modify your installed system. Also please attach a fresh Xorg.0.log and dmesg from this testing.

[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.

[gpothier (gpothier)]

The problem with detecting the native resolution of the panel may be the same as bug #352353, which is also with a Samsung monitor.