[lug] KDE 4 question

[Lee Woodworth]

On 12/02/2011 12:26 PM, Davide Del Vento wrote:
> Folks,
> I have a laptop (see hw/sw details below) which is usually connected
> with a docking station with two monitors. It works ok. Being a laptop,
> I want to undock it and use is by itself. So I turn the machine down,
> undock, turn on, and I login into that user: the screen goes black. I
> think the sucker thinks the two monitors are still attached and uses
> them instead of the laptop screen.
> 
> At first I though it was a driver issue (and maybe it is - at least in
> part), since I am seeing errors like "[drm: pch_irq_handler] *Error*
> PCH poison interrupt" (not sure exactly when), but I wasn't convinced
> because the login screen was ok, and hammering on the machine
> sometimes it worked (e.g. docking and undocking it several times
> repeatedly while it's on and playing with the screen settings - not
> something easily done on the go). Xorg.log doesn't show anything
> strange, besides a "(EE) intel(0): Couldn't create pixmap for fbcon"
> which happens also when the machine it's attached to the monitors and
> works, so I believe it's unrelated.
> 
> Now I created another user, I never logged in with this user while
> attached to the docking station and two external monitors and it works
> fine (does it rule 100% out of a driver issue? I don't know enough on
> this topic).
> 
> So, what I'd like to accomplish? Using the laptop as the first user
> while out of the docking station.
> 
> I unsuccessfully tried:
> 
> - before logging in, use a tty to manually switch between (what I
> though was a dual-external-monitor versus a single-attached-screen
> version of) plasma-desktop-appletsrc and/or plasma-desktoprc in
> ~/.kde/share/config/
> THIS HAD NO EFFECT AT ALL
> 
> - after logging in (and X/KDE goes black), use a tty to manually force
> xrandr (with the -d :0.0 option) to "turn on" the only connected
> monitor
> THIS PROVIDED ERRORS LIKE:
> X Error off failed request:  BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
>  Major opcode of failed request:  150 (RANDR)
>  Minor opcode of failed request:  7 (RRSetScreenSize)
>  Serial number of failed request 36
>  Current serial number in output stream:  37
> (note that, oddly, the screen  size was set to its minimum value of
> 320x200, while the connected LVDS1 was set to 1366x768 - no way to
> change it, because of this BadMatch error)
> 
> - forget about the original user and use a
> "laptop-with-no-external-screen user". This worked, and I could do
> anything with that user, but I didn't want to replicate my settings
> (e.g. for thunderbird), so I tried "xhost +; su otheruser -c
> thunderbird" but this causes thunderbird spits "An error occurred
> while loading or saving configuration information for thunderbird-bin.

If you have consolekit (probable with KDE4), you might try this:

    sudo -u user ck-launch-session dbus-launch /path/to/thunderbird

As far as I can tell, ck-launch-session does some magic to athenticate
or allow access to the Xorg screen and then execs the remainder of
the command line. dbus-launch sets up the environment for a process
to use dbus and then execs the remaining command line arguments.

> Some of your configuration settings may not work properly.", then
> freezing for 10 seconds and finally crashing (with the "GConf-WARNING
> **: Client failed to connect to the D-BUS daemon: libindicate-ERROR
> **: Unable to get session bus: Timeout was reached" on the command
> line)
> Now I could just swear, duplicate my IMAP thunderbird settings for
> this second user and be happy (I mostly do command line stuff and
> browser, so...)
> 
> But then what if I use a projector? Next week I have a talk at a
> conference and I am really afraid to lock the machine when the
> projector is attached, so I'd like to understand what is going on
> (fortunately, this time is a booth talk, so I have more time than a
> podium talk, but still....)
> 
> So the questions are: do you have any clue about what is happening? Do
> you know of any better file that I could swap (or delete?) instead of
> plasma-desktop-appletsrc and/or plasma-desktoprc? What would you do if
> you were in my shoes (all the loaner laptops I could get access to
> have other hw issues: old, dying battery, not enough memory for the
> presentation, large and heavy...)
> 
> HW:
> from lspci
> 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation
> Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
> from Xorg.log
> intel: Driver for Intel Integrated Graphics Chipsets: i810,
> 
> SW:
> from uname
> Linux cisl-augusta 3.0.0-13-generic #22-Ubuntu SMP Wed Nov 2 13:27:26
> UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
> from lsb_release
> Description:    Ubuntu 11.10
> from about KDE
> Platform Version 4.7.2 (4.7.2)
> 
> Thanks for any suggestions,
> Davide
> PS: Linus wants Gnome2 back, see
> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/linus-torvalds-would-like-to-see-a-gnome-fork/9347
> -
> Me too.
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