My dual-monitor setup broke after recent world update

mrmarcdee · n00b Joined: 18 Jan 2010 Posts: 67

I recently did a world update, which I admittedly don't do very often and thats probably part of my problem, including updating xorg-server nvidia-drivers nvidia-settings xfce and probably some other relevant things. After these updates I cannot get my dual monitor setup back to the way I like it, and how it was before. I have a 22" widescreen monitor and a 17" monitor, respectively set at 1920x1080 and 1280x1024 resolution. I have an nvidia card and have been using nvidia-settings tool most of the time to try and set it up correctly. I cannot recall what I was using previously with respect to Twinview/separate Xscreen/Xinerama, but for some reason I want to say that I was not using xinerama, but I could be wrong.

Previously I had:
*xfce taskbar on the bottom stretched across only the bottom of the larger monitor.
*xfce controlled image list for separate wallpapers on each monitor. Also, right clicking desktop->desktop setting showed tabs for each monitor.
*windows could be dragged between monitors.
*mplayer and other things (like games under wine) would fullscreen only to a single monitor.
*yakuake (drop down console terminal) only spanned one monitor, and would drop down to the monitor where the mouse currently was (which is a yakuake option)

Now I have (or don't have), in twinview:
*taskbar stretched across both monitors
*single wallpaper stretched across both monitors
*windows can be dragged across
*apps fullscreen across both monitors
*yakuake stretches across both monitors and the "drop down to monitor with mouse" option is grayed-out

in separate x screen:
*taskbar on one monitor (on wrong monitor too but I'm not worrying about that right now)
*monitor with taskbar has working wallpaper, monitor without has none
*cannot drag windows across
*apps fullscreen to only one monitor
*yakuake drops down to only monitor with taskbar, and not the other
*xfce desktop settings has tabs for both monitors for setting wallpaper

separate x screen with Xinerama:
basically same as twinview

Before the world update I deleted some USE flags from my make.conf, including xinerama, but have since put it back in and done an "emerge --newuse world", so it doesn't seem like lack of xinerama support is the issue. I am thinking it might be a metamodes issue, but am unsure how to set up my metamodes, especially with the way nvidia-settings has some metamodes already set up in xorg.conf.

The wallpaper and taskbar stretching are not super important, and for yakuake I can just set the screen width down to only span one monitor (although that means it will always only be on that one). What is really important is maximizing/fullscreen-ing programs to only one monitor and still being able to drag them across. I realize this should be basic functionaility with metamodes in twinview or xinerama, but its just doesn't seem to work.

Here is my xorg.conf, hopefully not too messy from lots of settings changes in nvidia-settings, and this is for twinview:

krinn · Advocate Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 3673

you need xinerama and right now in your config, it is disable

Gusar · Posted: Tue May 29, 2012 10:45 pm Post subject:

mrmarcdee · n00b Joined: 18 Jan 2010 Posts: 67

I've tried both xinerama and twin view. I've got the xinerama USE flag too.

Yah my xorg.conf is kinda messy, but its just what nvidia-settings set-up for me.

Gusar, are you saying start with that and only that in my xorg.conf, or just replace my "Device" sections with that?

Thanks,
Marc

Jaglover · Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 1:20 am Post subject:

Gusar meant that and only that.
_________________
Please learn how to denote units correctly!

mrmarcdee · n00b Joined: 18 Jan 2010 Posts: 67

OK,so, that gets me a desktop with the wallpaper stretched across both, the left monitor showing the right side of the display(screen/framebuffer/whatever), and the taskbar stretched across the whole width but not showing up on the smaller monitor.

Now what?

Thanks,
Marc

Jaglover · Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 1:43 am Post subject:

Now start adding stuff, methinks you need ServerLayout section and probably two Screen sections. I'm not an X expert myself, just try starting X and see Xorg log, it will tell you what's missing.
_________________
Please learn how to denote units correctly!

mrmarcdee · n00b Joined: 18 Jan 2010 Posts: 67

Ok, I think I need 1 screen section, 2 monitor sections and 1 serverlayout section. But I'm not sure what to put in these in order for it to work how I want/how it used to.

Thanks,
Marc

Jaglover · Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 1:55 am Post subject:

I'm not using TwinView and my displays are both same size and resolution, below is what is working for me. Probably has some unnecessary entries.

mrmarcdee · n00b Joined: 18 Jan 2010 Posts: 67

I think I'm getting somewhere after seeming to go in circles for way too long. Here is my current xorg.conf and xorg.log

Gusar · Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 4:31 pm Post subject:

mrmarcdee · n00b Joined: 18 Jan 2010 Posts: 67

Thank you for your help Gusar.

With

Gusar · Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 5:20 pm Post subject:

I'd say go for the brute-force method: Everything that has the xinerama flag, recompile it. XFCE uses the libwnck library for this stuff. The library itself doesn't have a xinerama flag, but it depends on GTK, which does. So maybe recompiling just GTK would do the trick.

As for aligning screens at the bottom... MetaModes are needed for that, that's the one thing you did get right in your xorg.conf

mrmarcdee · n00b Joined: 18 Jan 2010 Posts: 67

So recompile everything from the "equery hasuse xinerama" list? Does that list all packages with a xinerama flag option, or just packages that currently use the xinerama flag? If the latter case then I still do not know what other packages I need to recompile.

Gusar · Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 5:34 pm Post subject:

Yeah, everything from that list. And to be absolutely sure, afterwards I'd also recompile libwnck.

mrmarcdee · n00b Joined: 18 Jan 2010 Posts: 67

I re-emerged all of those packages, and using the --deep option. After that was done I had a small bit of progress. Yakuake now spanned only on one monitor, and was also able to pop-up on the monitor that the mouse was on, perfect!. However nothing else seemed to changed (taskbar,wallpaper,fullscreen/maximized windows). I was thinking this could have to do with Yakuake not really using the window manager (xfwm4). So I installed the awesome window manager, and the windows will maximize and go fullscreen to only one monitor under awesome, well, most importantly for now mplayer fullscreens well. There is lots of quirkyness/buggyness, but I'm not really sure if that is just because I havent configured awesome, or because I'm using it with all other xfce stuff (xfce taskbar, xfce-desktop,etc).

I don't really want to keep using awesome, I want to use xfce with xfwm(although I'm not opposed to trying out a new window manager, but at first glance awesome is not really what I'm looking for). It seems that somehow xfce isn't working well with the xinerama stuff. I've already tried re-emerging a lot of the xfce packages, to apparently no effect. I unfortunately can't work on this anymore for about 4 days. In the meantime if anybody has any insights that might help me or any suggestions please post them.

Thanks,
Marc

Jaglover · Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 9:13 pm Post subject:

You can use Openbox as a WM under Xfce. IMHO Openbox is a nice mature WM, I'm using it without any DE myself.
_________________
Please learn how to denote units correctly!

Gusar · Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 10:07 pm Post subject:

Yeah, Openbox is brilliant. I use it. Very flexible beast, and the pipe menus are cool.

In this case though, it shouldn't be needed. xfwm for sure supports xrandr/twinview. It must be a configuration issue. I don't have much experience with it though, so can't help. You did recompile libwnck, did you?

mrmarcdee · n00b Joined: 18 Jan 2010 Posts: 67

So I re-emerged all the dependencies of xfce4-meta, and all of the dependencies of those (Gusar: that includes libwnck). xfwm4 still does not maximize windows correctly to only one monitor. So I have instead installed and set-up openbox, along with feh(for background images), and tint2(panel/taskbar/tray). I am very pleased with how it is working. Although I am still curious as to what is wrong with xfwm4.

mrmarcdee · n00b Joined: 18 Jan 2010 Posts: 67

ok, I'm happy with my new set-up. It might even be better for me (blessing in disguise?). However, there is one thing. When I try to view youtube videos at fullscreen. it fullscreens it to the center of the virtual display, but then only displays the image on the main, big monitor, nothing on the second monitor. So I can only see a little more than half of the video. I use chromium built with xinerama support. Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks,
Marc

Edit: I tried re-emerging adobe-flash. No change
Also, youtube is having other problems, like sometimes the hue seems messed up, everything has a saturated light blue tint to it. And I get some weird transparency effects sometimes when I have a video in one tab, and something else in another tab(like right now) where I can see the colors changing like there is some sort of transparency between tabs.