Ubuntu :: Separate X Screens - Can't Return Pointer/cursor To Primary Screen?
Sep 16, 2010
I use a laptop, and frequently plug in to a separate monitor or to a TV screen. I have it set up to to separate X screens. When using my laptop touchpad, I find that once I move to the other monitor or TV screen, I can't return back to my laptop monitor. My USB mouse, however, is able to transition from screen to screen with no problem. I am using ubuntu 10.04 but had the same problem with 8.04 before I upgraded. I have an NVIDIA graphics card, and use the nvidia-settings (which generates the xorg.conf file) to manage the screens. Here is my xorg.conf:
Code:
# nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings
# nvidia-settings: version 1.0 (buildd@crested) Sun Feb 1 20:25:37 UTC 2009
# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig: version 1.0 (buildmeister@builder58) Fri Aug 14 18:33:37 PDT 2009
I'm running Ubuntu 10.10 which I recently installed on this emachines w3107. For some reason, while doing whatever I may be doing, my screen will flash off and on for about a minute, then when it stops flashing; there is no mouse pointer visible. I can still use the mouse, but it's ghost-like.
Did a quick search for these symptoms and couldn't find anything related. After upgrading to 10.04 I found that the computer (HP NC8000) now crashes frequently and at random intervals. It occurs sometimes after only a few minutes, other times after an hour or two. It happens while its in use, or while its idle, wether the screensaver is on or not, even if its locked and the lid closed. When I walk away and come back I find the screen has gone blank (except for the Mouse Pointer and a cursor in the top left) and the Caps Lock Light and Num Lock Light are flashing (signifying a crash)
I caught it while I was using it and watched as the screen suddenly went blank as described above. No errors or explanations or warning. A reboot restores order, but not for long. Some assistance with diagnosing this would be helpful. I suspect it could be ATI radeon 9600 mobility related, as with each passing version of ubuntu it seems to be more unstable
I'm getting some information about C language and this session of a C book (follow the above link) is using a bad example for me. When I'm trying this example of function returning a pointer, my compiler is stating a warning that I return a pointer to a local variable. I realized that it is error prone after all this variable may be override before the function has done his execution. And the author is fooling me saying that this example is "perfectly safe". I'm wrong? There is something that I don't got yet? Sorry but this site is preventing me to post the link of book cause I'm a newbie, so a need the hack it. Just strip out the question signs:
I am running Slackware X68_64 and I just purchased a second monitor. I enable separate x screens with nvidia-settings and when I reboot I get a black screen and when I put my mouse over to the secondary monitor I get X for the mouse pointer. Than after a while it just blacks out.
I have my computer set up to use separate x screens for both of my monitors and almost everything works perfectly. With this set up I don't have any problem displaying flash in full screen on either monitor like I had with twinview. I have it set up this way so that I can use my TV to display mythtv and still use my computer monitor to browse the web, etc. The only problem is that I use my iphone with hipporemote to give me a wireless keyboard/mouse. When using twinview this was not a problem as it was just one large desktop spread over two monitors.
However, switching to separate x screens seems to have broken the functionality of the vnc server. When using my physical keyboard and mouse I can just move the cursor off the side of monitor 1 to control monitor 2, however, if I'm connected via vnc the cursor gets "trapped" inside the active monitor. I can interact with each screen as expected but if I want to switch the mouse/keyboard focus to the other monitor I have to go to the computer and move the mouse to the desired monitor, which obviously defeats the purpose of using the iphone as a wireless remote.
So my question is this. Is there a way to assign a hotkey combination to switch the focus of keyboard and mouse that the vnc server is controlling? Or could I set the vnc server to only control one of the two x screens?
I have dual monitors that I have set up with two separate X screens with the nVidia control panel. For some reason at times when I move my mouse between the two screens, the cursor will start flickering rapidly between the adjacent edges of the screens and the system will become completely unresponsive, forcing me to do a hard reboot (the keyboard doesn't have a SysRq key).
Just a day ago I did a clean install of 10.04, after wiping the disk clean of 9.10. So far everything's working great. Except for my old dual-screen configuration. A year or two ago I badly wanted to have 2 monitors, where both would share the same desktop/workspace allowing me to drag windows back and forth between the two. After a lot of research, I finally was able to put together (although a probably quite sloppy) xorg.conf file that did the trick for me.
My case is somewhat unique in that my left monitor is horizontal, while my right monitor is rotated 90 degrees, and is vertical. In 10.04, my old xorg.conf file sort of works, but I have problems on my right, vertical screen:
- when I move my cursor onto the vertical screen, when I try to move it above where my left, horizontal screen's boundaries end, my cursor jumps down to the bottom of my vertical screen. I can't access anything with my cursor above this boundary on my vertical screen. Note that my vertical screen's bottom is in aligned with my horizontal screen's bottom, and that the vertical screen sticks up above the horizontal screen, as both have a 1680 x 1050 resolution/widescreen aspect ratio.
- however, it appears that only my cursor is having issues accessing the upper part of my vertical screen. When I maximize windows in this screen, they properly fill it up entirely like they should. (but I still can't access the top parts of these applications with my cursor).
So obviously there must be some boundary managing where my cursor is allowed to go, and another set of rules defining the boundaries that the windows themselves can be shown/take up. Also note that because of my right monitor being rotated vertically, I'm forced to use Xinerama. Can someone help me go through my xorg.conf file, below, to help me get this "simple" cursor issue fixed? I'm sure it's just one minor thing that has to be changed, but I'm not sure what:
Code: # nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings # nvidia-settings: version 1.0 (buildd@palmer) Sun Feb 1 20:21:04 UTC 2009 # nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig # nvidia-xconfig: version 1.0 (buildmeister@builder57) Thu Jul 17 18:39:19 PDT 2008 # xorg.conf (X.Org X Window System server configuration file)
Today my cursor became distorted. It worked fine on the second screen, connected to my notebook and screenshots displayed it well. So I did a little googling, and found out, that it is a known bug. I followed different tutorials. And now my cursor is blinking and disappearing. And it drives me crazy. It was a lot better when it was distorted. My xorg.conf:
Six months ago I installed Ubuntu 10.04 to my otherwise Win XP work laptop. I decided to continue to use Windows' boot loader as primary: I told the Ubuntu installer to put grub2 onto a separate partition, then used dd to copy the first 512 bytes into a file in my Windows C partition, then edited boot.ini to link to it - its a common technique that is described in many support forums and blogs. This worked fine, and continued to work until a few weeks ago. One day I chose the Ubuntu option at the Windows boot loader and got a blinking cursor at top left of screen and no grub2 menu. I was able to use SuperGrub2Disk to discover and boot from my grub2 install - so that didn't appear to be broken. I finally fixed it by dd'ing a fresh copy of the first 512 bytes of my /boot partition over to the Windows C partition. So somehow the Windows boot loader decided it no longer liked my original dd'ed file.
The only things I can think of that might have changed and caused this to happen are (on Ubuntu) an update to security packages using the graphical update manager that pops up (I rarely do a command line apt-get upgrade/dist-upgrade and certainly not in this time frame) and (on Windows) a Windows Update - as it is a work laptop I tend to take whatever essential updates it suggests. As you can see I managed to fix the problem. However does anybody have any similar experience or any explanation why this may have happened? Could an over-zealous Windows Update have caused it?
Im running netbook remix on a eeepc 1005ha. It is my only OS and Im loving it except for one obnoxious quirk. It randomly cuts text and randomly pastes it. If there is something in the clipboard, it will usually paste that, but just as often it will cut random text and paste that. The pastes occur when the cursor focus jumps back to the location of the cursor on the screen. I dont know a better way to phrase that, but thats what it is doing. Say... I put the cursor over the word "pastes" in the paragraph above... even though Im typing in this paragraph, the focus will "jump" to the cursors physical locale (the word "pastes") and then paste whatever is in the clipboard. If the cursor is outside of the textbox, the page will jump to the bottom.
This behavior occurs across programs and in any place text can be entered. I can find no rhyme or reason for it... it just... happens. Sometimes even when Im away from my computer, so its not like Im hitting some key on accident. I have loved everything about this ubuntu distro, but this issue is just toany obnoxious. Writing psych papers on this thing is going to be near impossible if I dont get this fixed before I go back to school.
I installed Ubuntu 11.04 today as the main OS on my laptop.I had deleted my XP partition, and repartitioned it according to a guide I had found. (http:url)......Basically it was setup like this: 500mb ext2 primary partition, has the grub folder, I believe this is either the '/' partition, or the '/boot' partition 2gb swap space logical partition
10gb ext4 logical partition -- this is either the '/' or the '/boot', it contains the 'bin,boot,cdrom,dev' etc folders 243gb (the rest of my hard drive, with the exception of a partition that contains documents and files from my XP OS, formatted to NTFS) ext4, this is the one that has all my desktop/documents/etc folders.After Ubuntu was done installing, I had some message pop up about installing an ATI proprietary driver for my ATI graphics card (an ATI Radeon HD 4330, I believe, I may have messed that number up). I installed it and rebooted, no problem.
Next, I had another update window pop up with 198 items checked and ready to download and install. I went through all of this, and rebooted, again, no problem.Next thing I did was install some apps that were essential for me to have to use for my work (an ide, chat programs, etc). No problem with any of that.Last thing to install was the OSE Virtualbox, and then I installed WindowsXP Pro and Windows Vista Business, then installed the guest addition addon for VB. This all worked without any issues whatsoever.
Time goes on, and I notice my computer is heating up much more than (seemingly) normal. I begin to wonder if its my graphics card. So I shut down the computer and let it cool down. Reboot, and no problem, still working fine.Then I opened a couple of apps and tried a simple game (can't remember the name) I believe it was a simple 3d topdown, as I wanted to test my graphics card. This is where things seemed to start to go wrong. My laptop began hanging, not even allowing me to access the terminal via ctrl+alt+f2. The screen flashed and I saw the blue/green/grey fuzz that I get when the graphics card is starting to heat up too much. Then everything hangs and I can't do anything at all, including move the mouse. I did a hard reboot (I believe this is what you call pulling the plug/pressing the power button, correct me if I'm wrong). I then rebooted, saw a chkdisk, then it booted seemingly normal, but it hung right after the purple screen after the grub screen.
This is pretty much where I'm at right now. I strongly suspect the fault is with the ATI drivers, but have been completely unsuccessful in my attempts to fix it. I've googled just about everything I could think of, along with searching these forums. I've tried just about everything listed in the forums, but to no avail.I've tried the commands that are supposed to purge the ati drivers, but all I get are errors that say they can't remove the 'virtual drivers'.
Right now I'm booting off a live cd, so I know the computer still works fine, just not my actual installed OS. I'd really like to get the issue resolved without having to reinstall, as it took quite awhile just to get it usable in the first place, but this has already taken so much time, I may just resort to that if we can't solve it any other way. Got too much work to catch up on as it is.As a re-instated note, perhaps if you have any tips, but not particularly about fixing the OS, my laptop (I'm strongly guessing my graphics card) is heating up much more than normal, compared to that when XP was installed. Is this more than likely just a driver issue, as is the rest of it? Also, I did have Compiz installed, though I didn't choose for it to be installed, I believe it came pre-installed. I've heard it could cause some issues, though I have no idea as to the validity or relation to this particular issue.
Edit: I just remembered while searching for a solution, I found a post somewhere that said something about the information not being sent to the monitor from the graphics card properly, thus no desktop. I'm guessing that'd still fall under the driver issues, but again, I'm unsure. I would think that wouldn't be entirely true anyway, since I can still see my mouse fine, just no desktop, only a black screen.
I reinstalled and forgot how I added a panel to my second screen, cause when you add a panel you choose left right top or bottom, but no option for second screen... finally I added a new panel, then right click on the new panel> properties, then unchecked "expand" then was able to move the new panel to second monitor, then set to whatever side and recheck "expand" then it sticks to the second screen, then add to panel, and select window list, then all new windows will be shown on the appropriate panel/screen
I am using 10.4, and an NVIDIA 5500 video card, two screens....
I have a problem with the Panel, top and bottom. It only shows on the main screen. When I set-up it showed on both, right across, was beautiful. I was quite happy to live with the shrunk down version until I noticed two things:
1. If an app or document is in the second screen (in this case the left) then it does not show up on the panel, until I drag it to the primary (right) screen.
2. Documents open in the secondary screen in full screen mode have a "white out" banner (which I assume is the hidden Panel) across the top and bottom ribbons. This is a BIG problem, because it means there is no access to the Max, Min, Close and drag facilities, and as it is not visible in the Panel that is showing, read 1 above, then it just sits there.
Screen shot enclosed. Not the min, max on this are the doc, not the ap... But you can see the blank Panel.
I have 10.4 and nVIDEA 5500 on my PC. I am running two screens, run as twin so that the desktop spans the two monitors.
I have noticed that when I try and stretch a window across the two screens, very useful in spreadsheets, the window 'pings' back to a much smaller size.
I open in, say my main monitor. I move the window to span across the two and than manually stretch the window. It will stretch to some extent but if I then go beyond a certain pint it then slams shut.
Also, if I click the MAXIMISE button on the window it only expands to full screen in one terminal.
This did NOT happen in 9.10, and does not happen in any Windows OS, so I know it has something to do with the new 10.4 build.
After installing a second screen and trying dual screens, i never backedup the x11 xorg.config file and recklessy overwrote my settings through that nvidia panel... Now to find that x wont start :(EE) no devices detected Fatal server error: No screens found
how i'd be able to share my xorg.config file with you guys, I am using my ipod now... Anyone knows anything? I tried reconfiguring and didn't work.. How do i share my file so you guys can find the flaw? Or how do i find the flaw myself?
I'm on Ubuntu 11.04 and I have this annoying issue. it does happen very often, but enough to be a problem (atleast once a day or more).While I'm browsing the web (not really doing much of anything else) the screen goes black with some text. I don't get enough time to read the text and I'm returned to the login screen. I'm completely logged off, my session isn't still there when I log back in
When I use seperate x screen with nvidia, I only get a black screen on the tv. I can only see the mouse cursor on the tv. But can I see the rest? I use the Nvidia driver. I use the configuration "seperate x screen", and it is connected with a hdmi cable. I use Sabayon linux 5.2, and use the gnome desktop. Could it be that gnome dosn't support seperate x screen like KDE 4?
i'm using a monitor and a lcd tv. how can i set my monitor as my primary screen? for example if i open a videos video in fullscreen mode it always plays on my monitor, but i want it to play it on the lcd tv.
my xorg.conf html code: section "serverlayout" identifier "amdcccle layout" screen 0 "aticonfig-screen[0]-0" 0 0 endsection
I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro L500 laptop on which I installed the beta of Ubuntu 11.04. Things seems to work smoothly at the moment, but with one niggle. I have an external monitor connected to my laptop, and can manage to have a dual-screen configuration, and I am able to move the mouse from one screen to another correctly; however, the menus, status bars and window icons remain stubbornly only on the laptop screen. This is happening with Unity as well as Gnome.
If I disable the laptop screen with grandr (the Gnome GUI for xrandr) they do migrate on the external screen, but they swoosh back to the laptop if I reactivate it. Trying to alter the layout with grandr or using xrandr with the --right-of option from the command line do not change anything good. I randomly get the laptop screen to become half black.Incidentally, something like it used to happen with Fedora 12 (I think) some months ago.
I did a clean install of Ubuntu Studio 10.04 (64bit) a few days ago. Everything has been running fine for a few days. Yesterday, while working in an html editor (Kompozer) and Firefox, the cursur stareted drifting to the top of the screen. It still responds to the mouse, but I am working against this pull and as soon as I stop moving the mouse, the cursor goes to the top again. It doesn't go left or right, just straight up. I had 8.01 on this before and never had nay issues like this. I have a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse, but there is no trackpad on the keyboard.
I've tried shutting off the mouse power and rebooting with a regular wired mouse, and I get the same behavior. I don't have another keyboard right now, so I haven't tried disconnecting the wireless transceiver all together.
I am using Ubuntu 10.10 on my Dell Inspiron 1525. I haven't have been having consistent internet connection, hence haven't updated for much of the time. Yesterday I tried to update the Firefox browser from 3.6 to 4 and ran
Code:
sudo apt-get install firefox
It told a amount of around 57 packages would be updated in the process. After the installation I shutdown and went to sleep.The system now boots to purple screen ubuntu dot loading and then to black screen with the mouse pointer in the centre. Then nothing happens. I searched in the forums and tried to go to recovery mode and ran dkpg, then failsafeX, but failsafeX cannot detect my input devices, Hence I can't do anything.
I know there's a way to do this, I've seen them in countless installation how-tos, but for the life of me I can't seem to make it work.On my personal machine I have win xp pro & fedora 11-kde dual booted on my #1 320gb hdd.I have win 7 enterprise on the #2 320gb hdd. I am a networking student and am currently taking Linux Admin I, class.For a class project on IT, I am trying to put together a ppt of how I accomplished setting up my machine and having slides of the grub loader screen,he win 7 boot loader screen would be a nice addition. But I can not get it to work. Have tried using the shift & prt scr keys to make a copy & then pasting it into a text editor on linux or wordpad in windows, but it doesn't take
I am using OpenSuse 11.3 (64 bit) on my desktop and I have two (identical) screens connected to its on board Intel graphics chips. Both screens are detected and there is no problem when they are cloned, but if I want to have one screen right of the other (using the command xrandr --output VGA1 --right-of HDMA1, as the KDE settings manager never managed to have any effect), the right screen is shifted ca. 100 pixels to the left and on the right side of it I see the left side of the left screen.t seems both screens are detected if I type XRandR:
Code: Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 2560 x 1024, maximum 8192 x 8192 VGA1 connected 1280x1024+1280+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 338mm x 270mm
Recently I connected second monitor to my laptop. Everything seems ok. I got what i wanted: extended working space, panel on second monitor with windows list that are present on corresponding screen. One thing that is annoying me is GDM. It displays login dialog on my second LCD not laptop. Is there a way to make GDM to display login dialog window on my laptop or how to designate laptop LCD as primary screen or something?
I am running Ubuntu 8.04 on a laptop. I have a 19" Acer monitor and in the past have successfully configured my xorg.conf to handle dual monitor setup with 1024x768 on the laptop and 1600x900 on the Acer monitor. What I have done now is run the laptop through a KVM switch. Due to this, I would like to set the Acer monitor as the primary monitor and just shut the laptop. How can I project my laptop screen to my Acer monitor so that I can use the 1600x900 resolution available rather than just cloning my laptop and using 1024x768?
I've installed Ubuntu 10.04 on an old PC with an Intel 845 series motherboard, using an onboard graphics solution. By default, it boots with an 800x600 screen resolution. When I change the resolution to 1024x768, the resolution switches perfectly, but the mouse pointer disappears. The mouse can still be USED, but I have to 'guess' where the pointer is. The only way I have found to rectify the situation is to reboot, upon which the resolution returns to 800x600 again as well. Kubuntu 10.04 suffers from the same problem, only in Kubuntu the mouse pointer reappears when the resolution switches back to 800x600, so I don't need to reboot.
In a nutshell: If the computer goes to blank screen (set that way in screensaver settings) I can hit a key and get the unlock dialog. However, if I walk away for longer and come back, I can't get the machine to wake up. It is powered on, but nothing comes up on the screen. I can't get other terminals by using ctrl-alt-FunctionKeys, either. I CAN, though, ssh into the machine from my desktop computer, and that works normally.I've installed 10.04 off of a live CD onto my Toshiba Satellite A45-S250 laptop. I had originally tried upgrading from 9.10 on the machine, however it wouldn't boot after the upgrade. The live CD also originally wouldn't work for me until I used a work around that involved adding "i915.modeset=0 xforcevesa" to the boot command line of the "Install Ubuntu" option of the live CD. This caused the CD to install, and now the laptop works properly.
The computer boots normally now, but on shutdown, the screen does go all "squiggly" before turning off.This doesn't interfere with the shut down or start up, though.I can post whatever logs or such that would help, but would have to be told what is relevant here. I've been using ubuntu on and off on this laptop since sometime in 2005, and have never experienced an issue like this.
