F11/Gnome: Dual Monitors using a KVM switch (Belkin Flip)

[lukea]

Hi, hopefully someone can help me with this as I can get it to work on Ubuntu, but not on Fedora.

I have a laptop with Fedora installed, and a PC with Windows installed. I have a Belkin Flip KVM switch which allows me to share a monitor, keyboard and mouse with the two computers. I used to have ubuntu installed, but got rid of it as it felt quite laggy (scrolling in firefox was choppy, and typing in gedit was slow to render).

If I plug the monitor into the KVM, then plug the KVM into the laptop, then the external monitor is not detected by Gnome (although it is detected by xrandr). So if I go into [ System > Accessories > Display ] there is only the laptop screen, but if I type xrandr into a terminal I get...

[luke@hp510 ~]$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 800, maximum 4096 x 4096
VGA1 unknown connection (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
   1024x768       60.0  
   800x600        60.3  
   640x480        59.9  
LVDS1 connected 1280x800+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 331mm x 207mm
   1280x800       60.0*+

If I plug the monitor directly into the laptop, then go to [ System > Accessories > Display ] the two monitors are there and I can turn on the external monitor. If I then unplug the monitor, and plug it into the KVM, and plug the KVM VGA connector back into the laptop - it works until I have to reboot. When the monitor is plugged directly into the laptop, here is what xrandr returns.

[luke@hp510 ~]$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 800, maximum 4096 x 4096
VGA1 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
   1280x1024      60.0 +   75.0  
   1024x768       75.1     70.1     60.0  
   832x624        74.6  
   800x600        72.2     75.0     60.3     56.2  
   640x480        72.8     75.0     66.7     60.0  
   720x400        70.1  
LVDS1 connected 1280x800+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 331mm x 207mm
   1280x800       60.0*+

I have had this working in Ubuntu without having to mess around unplugging things, so I was wondering if there was any way to get it to remember the settings that work and then force it to use those settings.

[lukea]

So that will be a no then.

[ryptyde]

Originally Posted by lukea

So that will be a no then.

Maybe, but I have an Acer Aspire One net book and also a IOGear usb KVM switch that is used between 2 desktops computers. So I unplug from one of the desktop boxes and plug the kvm monitor cable into the AAO and the AAO desktop appears across both monitors. The AAO is currently running F12 alpha and I go to System>Preferences>Display and turn off the AAOs 9" display and use the 17" one instead.

EDIT: to switch between the desktop and laptop I have to tap the scroll key twice, did you try that also I'm sure you did but worth a try.

[lukea]

Originally Posted by ryptyde

Maybe, but I have an Acer Aspire One net book and also a IOGear usb KVM switch that is used between 2 desktops computers. So I unplug from one of the desktop boxes and plug the kvm monitor cable into the AAO and the AAO desktop appears across both monitors. The AAO is currently running F12 alpha and I go to System>Preferences>Display and turn off the AAOs 9" display and use the 17" one instead.

Thanks for the reply, seems I might have to wait for Fedora 12 stable before this will work for me.

Originally Posted by ryptyde

EDIT: to switch between the desktop and laptop I have to tap the scroll key twice, did you try that also I'm sure you did but worth a try.

My kvm has a button on it, so switching between the desktop and laptop isn't an issue. It's just annoying that I have to plug the laptop directly into the monitor, go into the System>Preferences>Display, turn the monitor on, then plug the monitor back into the KVM, and the KVM into the laptop. It all works fine until I reboot, then I need to go through the process again.

I was hoping there would be a way of generating an xorg.conf file (or similar) from the current working settings, so instead of auto-detecting and getting it wrong it would read the settings and know to turn the display on even if it thinks it isn't connected.

[lukea]

Upon playing around further it seems the monitor did show up in [ System > Accessories > Display ], but only if I clicked and dragged the laptop screen about, it would then appear next to it. But my next problem was that I could not set the resolution to higher than 1024x768, so I wrote this shell script which I put on the desktop and made executable - so when I clicked on it it would set the external monitor to "1280x1024", turn it on, and place it to the right of my laptop screen.

#!/bin/sh

xrandr --newmode "1280x1024"  108.88  1280 1360 1496 1712  1024 1025 1028 1060  -HSync +Vsync
xrandr --addmode VGA1 1280x1024
xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1280x1024 --right-of LVDS1

If you use this code enter xrandr into a terminal to see the names of your screens first. And if you want to set another resolution then you will need to use this command, and it will return the code for the [ xrandr --newmode ] command.

# gtf <horiztonal> <vertical> <refresh rate>
gtf 1600 1200 60