Problem with Multiple Monitors

[jdnow30]

Recently installed Kubuntu and I love it! But I have trouble with my external monitors. I have a Dell Latitude 5570 on a docking station with two external monitors attached. When I remove the laptop from the docking station, I keep losing the monitor configuration. I can get it back by going to the display settings and rerunning my setup, but it's annoying to do it. I had heard there is a bug in plasma about handling multiple monitors but wasn't sure if there is a workaround.

The video card is an Intel HDGraphics 520

Any tips or things I can try?

[oshunluvr]

Yes, KScreen has never been very good at handling multiple monitors. It's one of the areas that KDE really needs work.

What I did for my Dell laptop was write a script and set it to run at bootup. You could also run it manually. In my case, it was my external monitor requiring a specific setting to work and KDE kept defaulting to the wrong settings no matter what I did. Here's my script:

#!/bin/bash
#


docked () {
xrandr --output eDP-1 --off --output DP-3 --mode 3840x1600 --rate 60.00 --dpi 110 --primary
}


not_docked () {
xrandr --output eDP-1 --auto --primary --output DP-3 --mode 3840x1600 --rate 60.00 --dpi 110 --right-of eDP-1
}


not_attached () {
xrandr --output eDP-1 --auto --primary
}


mode="3840x1600"
mode0=`xrandr | grep -n -w "DP-3" | awk -F: '{ print $1 }'`
mode1=`expr $mode0 + 1`
modeX=199


if [[ `cat /sys/class/drm/card0-DP-3/status` = "disconnected" ]]; then
        not_attached
    else
        if [[ `cat /sys/class/power_supply/AC/online` -eq 1 ]]; then
            if [[ -n `xrandr | sed -n "$mode1","$modeX""p" | grep "$mode"` ]]; then
                if [[ `cat /proc/acpi/button/lid/LID0/state | awk '{ print $2 }'` = "closed" ]]; then
                        docked
                    else
                        not_docked
fi; fi; fi; fi


exit 0

Obviously the content of the script is very specific to my usage, but you could modify it to your needs.

The three conditions I used; docked, not_docked, not_attached, handled the uses I needed. "docked" meant plugged into A/C power, attached to the external monitor, and lid closed. "not_docked" meant the external monitor was attached but I was going to use both the internal and external monitors. "not_attached" meant no external monitor was detected.

[jdnow30]

Thanks! That helped, especially the lid close check as I had been hunting for a way to determin if the laptop was docked or not. Do you know if there is a way to call and action to run a script if the laptop is connected to a dell docking station?