Hi - I have a dell insprion 4000 and a kernel that I compiled with the dell options.
I also installed the i8kutils package, which are a bunch of Dell Insprion 8000 utilities which claim to work on the 4000 also. I was unable to find what I was looking for there, but maybe I was barking up the wrong man page.

When the dell is DOCKED, the laptop is closed and the internal keyboard is inaccessible. I boot into linux, and I can see the video on the external monitor during the framebuffer bootup sequence.

Then, as soon as X-Windows starts, I can see it switch on the laptop's LCD display and the output is cut off from the external monitor. I can switch back to the framebuffers ctrl-alt F1-F5 and then I can see what I am typing, the LCD switches off. As soon as I go back into X, it's using the LCD again.

I'd love to hit the FN-F8 key which would toggle between the different internal/external monitor configurations, but I can't get to the internal keyboard.

Is there some kind of script/program I can run that allows me to cycle through the LCD/CRT configurations like the FN-F8 key does? Or even better, some shortcut to the FN key when I'm on an external keyboard?