Dell laptop / nvidia / docking station active screen problem

[mrasue]

I have a Dell D820 with the Nvidia Quadro NVS 120M video card (Fedora sees it as a GeForce Go 7400) and a docking station with a Dell 2001FP LCD attached to the VGA connector. Fedora 7 is loaded and the closed source nvidia drivers (yum install kmod-nvidia from Livna) in use. When I boot up docked, I see the grub screen and some of the initial boot process until the nvidia card is initialized at which point my LCD screen turns off and the laptop screen turns on (I crack the lid and see it is on). The boot process continues on until X starts up at which point the LCD monitor turns back on and I see the X login screen.

Last year I had a D800, docking station and Fedora 6 and it handled the LCD just fine. I could watch the whole boot process without any issues. Is there anything I can do to tell the boot process / nvidia that the laptop is docked and to keep the LCD active? This is merely an annoyance but it would be nice to get it working correctly.

By the way, whenever I upgrade the kernel and don't get the matching kmod-nvidia package, when the boot process turns off the LCD, it never turns on again. I pretty much have to have the matching kmod-nvidia package.

[strikeforce]

You need the nvidia driver installed which is why it doesn't work if you don't install the nvidia driver on an upgrade of the kernel.

There is a details button when you boot up is this what you mean?

[mrasue]

The nvidia driver is installed. I just updated the kernel again to 2.6.22.9-91.fc7 along with the matching kmod-nivida drive and now when booting when attached to the docking station it won't ever switch back to the docking station display output. Stays on the laptop lcd panel. Is their a way to get the Dell D820 function keys to work ie. Fn+F8 is supposed to switch between the lcd panel and crt monitor?

[strikeforce]

Under system -> settings I think there is a keybinding's panel you can adjust your keybindings there. I have never tried what you are doing but my assumption is it should work.

[mrasue]

Thanks for the idea. Couldn't find any key binding to handle the lcd to vga switch, unfortunately. I got tired of fighting it so I tried doing a dual monitor approach where I'm using both the laptop lcd panel and the externally lcd monitor attached to the D/Port docking station. That seems to work for the most part. The boot process is amusing as it switches back and forth between the laptop screen and the external screen but once I login I have dual monitors working. Interestingly though, I thought I set the primary screen in xorg.conf to be the laptop but instead the external monitor seems to have it. Oh well, I'll figure that out later.
Thanks for the comments.

[strikeforce]

There are settings within xorg to get it to work but unfortunately I've never tried to get it to work. I do not in the howto section for the ati drivers there is a method on how to set it up but you'll have to search through the thread itself.