Xorg dual-head fail

[Pavel Shevchuk]

Amount of voodoo depends on graphics driver. With radeons even single
screen setup can be major PITA

2009/3/1 Ahmed Kamal <email.ahmedkamal at googlemail.com>:
> A software developer gets a new HDMI monitor to connect to his laptop .. he
> connects the HDMI output to the laptop .. no notification, nothing pops up
> ..  mmm .. he searches through the menus for something .. Screen resize n
> rotate (krandrtray) looks promising ... he plays with it, it gets the 2
> monitors mirrored, but he wants to spread the desktop on them both, tens of
> clicks here and there .. it's not going anywhere ... he calls the local
> linux guru, which happens to be me. I play with krandr too, nothing .. I
> appologize for having to use cli tricks, I open up konsole, and fire-up
> xrandr, after some time to get the 11 word xrandr command just about right
> ... Xrandr fails to set the display and bitches about some virtual-size
> thingie .. googling reveals I need "Virtual" directive in xorg.conf .. mm ..
> ok, I vim xorg.conf .. but it's not there ... ah, everything in newer fedora
> should be automatic, heh, I remember. Ok .. so I need to create an xorg.conf
> .. I launch system-config-display .. set the dual-head option there (how
> didnt I think of that one before) .. couple of clicks .. save the config ..
> oops, some "index out of range" error spits on the konsole screen and the
> tool just hangs there .. no error messages that there were some errors
> saving, nothing ... ick ... xorg.conf was not created! I give
> system-config-display another shot .. it crashes the exact way again ... doh
> .. (at this stage I should already be cursing .. but I'm not :) I launch
> system-config-display one third time with --no-ui option to create some
> boiler plate xorg.conf, this time it works .. I add the needed "Virtual"
> thingie ... I set it to 4096x4096 .. restart X .. it fails to start
> completely ... no graceful recovery :/ I reboot the box ... X doesn't start
> again .. no errors .. doesn't take me back to console .. just a pretty black
> blank screen! Reboot again, runlevel 3 .. tweak Virtual .. init 5 .. X
> starts. I finally login .. run "xrandr" and tweak the command .. now things
> start to look good again. I make the user a shell alias, tell him to type it
> whenever that monitor is attached to his laptop ... end of my story!
>
> Does something as common as attaching an extra monitor to a laptop, require
> that much voodoo ..! How would a "normal" user react ! I wont try to mention
> how to resolve the problems mentioned here, since you guys know this better
> than I do ... I'm not whining either, I'm simple mentioning somthing is
> definitely wrong, with the hope of spurring action to make things better
>
> Regards
>
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