Dell Latitude E6410 muiple monitors using docking station

ravi.xolve · 12-22-2011, 04:42 AM

I am using Dell Latitude E6410 with a docking station which provides external monitor, USB and audio I/O ports. I am using openSuse 12.1 with KDE. My graphics card as listed by lspci is:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)

When not plugged in to the docking station my LCD monitor is recognized as: eDP1 . The docking station's model number is: PR 03X . The external monitor is connected via DVI cable.

The external monitor connected works fine, but the laptop's own LCD display remains off. Even KDE doesn't detect it. I want to use laptop's monitor as another KDE virtual desktop.

How can I do so?

Timothy Miller · 12-23-2011, 09:34 PM

Can you do a FN+F8 to enable the laptop LCD and then configure through KrandrTray?

ravi.xolve · 12-26-2011, 04:20 AM

Nopes, that doesn't work.

ravi.xolve · 12-28-2011, 08:39 AM

My friend is using the Ubuntu 11.10 with the same laptop model and docking station and both monitors work perfectly fine for him. To me now it looks like openSuse uses inappropriate drivers for my graphics card. How can I use Ubuntu's driver for my laptop without breaking the package system.

Timothy Miller · 01-01-2012, 08:14 PM

What driver is your laptop using?

If you're not sure, post the output of lsmod.

ravi.xolve · 01-01-2012, 11:38 PM

Its i915. Here is the output of lsmod for further info:

Code:

Module                  Size  Used by
ac                     13055  0 
acpi_cpufreq           18766  1 
af_packet              35338  2 
arc4                   12529  2 
autofs4                43290  2 
battery                18608  0 
button                 13949  1 i915
cdrom                  47994  1 sr_mod
cfg80211              210325  2 iwlagn,mac80211
container              12839  0 
cpufreq_conservative    13821  0 
cpufreq_powersave      12618  0 
cpufreq_userspace      13162  0 
crc_itu_t              12707  1 firewire_core
dcdbas                 14977  1 dell_laptop
dell_laptop            13795  0 
dell_wmi               12681  0 
dm_mod                 92333  0 
drm                   252967  4 i915,drm_kms_helper
drm_kms_helper         42489  1 i915
e1000e                222320  0 
firewire_core          71750  1 firewire_ohci
firewire_ohci          44818  0 
fuse                   87950  7 
i2c_algo_bit           13423  1 i915
i2c_i801               18013  0 
i915                  638343  8 
iTCO_vendor_support    13718  1 iTCO_wdt
iTCO_wdt               17863  0 
intel_ips              18493  0 
ip6_tables             27864  4 ip6t_LOG,ip6table_raw,ip6table_mangle,ip6table_filter
ip6t_LOG               17095  5 
ip6t_REJECT            12974  3 
ip6table_filter        12815  1 
ip6table_mangle        12740  0 
ip6table_raw           12683  1 
ip_tables              27717  2 iptable_raw,iptable_filter
ipt_LOG                13040  5 
ipt_REJECT             12576  3 
iptable_filter         12810  1 
iptable_raw            12678  1 
iwlagn                396525  0 
mac80211              332546  1 iwlagn
mei                    84843  0 
microcode              35758  0 
mmc_core              108074  1 sdhci
mperf                  12667  1 acpi_cpufreq
nf_conntrack           96202  6 nf_conntrack_ipv6,xt_NOTRACK,nf_conntrack_netbios_ns,nf_conntrack_broadcast,nf_conntrack_ipv4,xt_conntrack
nf_conntrack_broadcast    12589  1 nf_conntrack_netbios_ns
nf_conntrack_ipv4      14783  3 
nf_conntrack_ipv6      14349  3 
nf_conntrack_netbios_ns    12665  0 
nf_defrag_ipv4         12729  1 nf_conntrack_ipv4
nf_defrag_ipv6         18438  1 nf_conntrack_ipv6
parport                46528  2 ppdev,parport_pc
parport_pc             37537  0 
ppdev                  17718  0 
processor              45192  1 acpi_cpufreq
rfkill                 25967  2 cfg80211,dell_laptop
sdhci                  37175  1 sdhci_pci
sdhci_pci              14286  0 
sg                     36561  0 
snd                    86602  11 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_timer
snd_hda_codec         118874  3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_intel
snd_hda_codec_hdmi     36348  1 
snd_hda_codec_idt      74966  1 
snd_hda_intel          33441  2 
snd_hwdep              13613  1 snd_hda_codec
snd_page_alloc         18572  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
snd_pcm               109594  3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
snd_timer              34086  1 snd_pcm
soundcore              15091  1 snd
sparse_keymap          13890  1 dell_wmi
sr_mod                 22464  0 
thermal_sys            25017  2 video,processor
tun                    22987  0 
video                  19653  1 i915
wmi                    19256  1 dell_wmi
x_tables               34102  16 ip6t_LOG,xt_tcpudp,xt_pkttype,ipt_LOG,xt_limit,ip6t_REJECT,ip6table_raw,xt_NOTRACK,ipt_REJECT,iptable_raw,ip6table_mangle,xt_conntrack,ip6table_filter,ip6_tables,iptable_filter,ip_tables
xt_NOTRACK             12504  4 
xt_conntrack           12760  6 
xt_limit               12711  10 
xt_pkttype             12504  3 
xt_tcpudp              12924  2

Timothy Miller · 01-01-2012, 11:48 PM

Well, I know that driver works. Testing on my E5500 that has the same chipset. Don't have a docking station, but do have an external monitor hooked up. However, it DOESN'T remember the settings after rebooting, so I have to apply it every time...or create a xorg.conf.

If it's not working, I'm thinking you might have a hardware issue.

Code:

i915                  312036  3 
drm_kms_helper         20814  1 i915
drm                   152415  4 i915,drm_kms_helper
i2c_algo_bit            4225  1 i915
intel_agp              10131  1 i915
i2c_core               16460  5 i915,drm_kms_helper,drm,i2c_algo_bit,i2c_i801
intel_gtt              11655  3 i915,intel_agp
button                  4193  1 i915
video                  10661  1 i915

http://i44.tinypic.com/w72c6q.jpg

ravi.xolve · 01-03-2012, 12:01 AM

I will try on my machine with an Ubuntu live disk and tell you the result. Can you please tell that other than output of /etc/X11 and lsmod what else do I need to note down to compare the two cases.

Timothy Miller · 01-03-2012, 07:34 PM

Since you mentioned KDE in your first post, all I did was boot, start up krandrtray, verify it saw 2 monitors in the list, then configure it through said krandrtray. I am unable to try with OpenSuse due to the fact that I don't have it (I don't like their random version numbering), but did test on both Kubuntu and Debian Wheezy w/ KDE. Also on Arch w/ KDE. Worked on all those.

So it COULD be an issue with OpenSuse also...although when I ran whatever their old version was I did use dual monitors, but it was with an Nvidia card, not Intel.

ravi.xolve · 01-03-2012, 11:18 PM

Thats quite the problem. Krandrtay recognises just one monitor (external monitor) for me.

Timothy Miller · 01-04-2012, 10:29 PM

So even the live disc still only shows a single output?

ravi.xolve · 01-05-2012, 12:58 AM

I used Ubuntu 11.10 Live CD to boot and it worked fine. Then I got the trick and tried my openSuse with external monitor connected to the dock turned on and kept the laptop lid open so that its also on. This way both the monitors were detected and I could set the settings from KDE display to not to clone the display but to put them side by side. It looks there is problem with the drivers so that if laptop of the monitors is turned one during startup it will go undetected later.

The dual monitor setup was cool. Here is my experience:

* The 4 virtual desktops on one monitor and 4 on other.
* I could set up two wallpapers for two screens.
* However the virtual desktops for both screens were mapped one to one. If I switch to desktop grid on one screen it would show desktop grid on another monitor. And if I switch to virtual desktop one on one screen it switches to virtual desktop 1 on another screen. And the virtual desktops were kinda extended across the screens.
* Moving windows across virtual-desktop/screen worked great. While in desktop grid mode I could move window from virtual desktop 1 screen 1 to virtual desktop 3 screen 2 easily.
* The plasma taskbar was also movable across screen, which looked so cool.
* I think the semantics of virtual desktops and multiple screens is not so much worked upon and it can be made more intuitive.

Then I switched off my machine and a little while later I used it it with just the laptop monitor. The effects were disastrous. KDE still behaved as if with two monitor. I saw two different wallpapers over one another with one one of them visible at the left edge. Taskbar was missing. Desktop icons were missing. I deleted the kwinrc file and even lost the capability to show windows on screen. Even krunner was showing up and disappearing. Alt-tab would show the applications open but I couldn't switch to them.
I deleted all plasma config files and kwin config files and then it worked fine.

The solution I think is that when in dual/multiple monitor mode KDE should use separate configuration and when in single monitor mode use another configuration. When more/lesser monitors are there try to create new configurations accordingly. The customizations like adding/removing plasma applets, wallpaper change can be mapped to other configurations while user is is in one of the configurations.