nvidia drivers, twinview and incorrect primary display

[rmdegennaro]

What I'm seeing is that the "primary display" gets put to the wrong monitor (the external monitor) on my laptop. This happens when using the nvidia-settings app and the external monitor is the same resolution as the laptop display. The nvidia-settings app also changes the primary display to the correct one (as by the checkbox at least) if I load the app and quit without changes.

If I missed a thread with this already, I'm sorry. Please point me to the right one.

So, I'm not sure how to tell what is causing this without lots of experimentation with versions of packages. And since there is a work-around (starting & quitting app with no changes) and its my primary computer for work, I'd rather do less intrusive stuff. Anyone have ideas? I could file a bug report too if I knew better what information to supply and where to supply it. It will probably fall on dead-ears if its NVidia, but I thought I'd at least ask... :-X

Oh, and config information: Ubuntu 9.10, with kubuntu-desktop added (don't ask ), fully updated as of 2/3/2010 (i.e. X.org 11.0, server 1.6.4, etc.), NVIDIA accelerated drivers version 185.15.36, NV-Control Version 1.18, Apple Macbook Pro (version 3,1), ViewSonic VA2626WM.

[oshunluvr]

Re: nvidia drivers, twinview and incorrect primary display

I don't think the behavior you're seeing is actually a bug, but rather some programmer's idea of how it should be. I think the philosophy is you would only hook up an external monitor if you were using it to replace the attached one. Anyway...

We need more info to help you. Start by attaching your current /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, tell us exactly how you want it to behave, and listing steps you have taken to get it to work how you want and the results.

[skunk]

Re: nvidia drivers, twinview and incorrect primary display

man nvidia-settings

Have a look through the command line options.
I believe you need to use --load-config-only in your .initrc or .bashrc

[rmdegennaro]

Re: nvidia drivers, twinview and incorrect primary display

Sorry I forgot to add notification & haven't had time to come look here.

For the xorg.conf, I haven't edited it at all. What it has is:

ection "Screen"
    Identifier   "Default Screen"
    DefaultDepth  24
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load  "glx"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier   "Default Device"
    Driver "nvidia"
    Option "NoLogo"    "True"
EndSection

The thing that is odd, is that the ignoring of the default monitor setting is only with my monitor at home (which matches the laptop display at 1920x1200). While the same behavior doesn't happen on my monitor at work, which is 2048x1152. That's sorta why I thought it a bug. And I did not describe that well when I first posted.

In some ways, I was just hoping for consistency, and not too much futzing. I guess I don't mind editing the xorg.conf, but since the autoconfigure generally works well and the monitor I use varies on location so much, I tend not to.

I also don't mind putting up information somewhere if that behavior is not what should happen. If it is, oh well, not that big a deal...