Support for multiple monitors broken

 importance high

This is a key thing to get right in Natty, even if "right" is only
parity with the desktop.

Mark

Please make sure this gets fixed, X support for dual monitors is poor enough (ie you cant dual screen with multiple graphics cards, a feature in windows since at least win2000) without crippling it even more with a broken Unity.

Just make sure the project lead is using 2 monitors and I'm sure this wont be an issue ;)

Hmm, can you try with the GNOME session and report what happens? Also, if possible, a picture of the monitors showing the error would be great for debugging.

> Hmm, can you try with the GNOME session and report what happens? Also,
> if possible, a picture of the monitors showing the error would be great
> for debugging.

The behavior is the same on the Gnome session. But the general
behavior of the bug has gotten worse. Now if I so much as open the
Monitors application with a second monitor plugged in, the X window
becomes irresponsive. If I plug it after opening the application, it
behaves normally (but without image on the second monitor) until I
click on Detect monitors.

What happens then on all cases is: the mouse continues to work, moving
in what seems to be a rectangle containing the two monitors, but all
open windows blink on and off the main screen and no keyboard input is
recognized by any of the windows. The Gnome panel and Unity bar
disappear, and the only way to get it working again is to go to text
mode via Ctrl+Alt+F1 and rebooting.

As to the screenshot, should I take a picture of the frozen monitors,
or a short movie showing the windows blinking?

--
Daniel

I was talking with Neil earlier today and told him I would investigate this on my dual monitor desktop. Prior to this windows weren't maximizing correctly and things that should have worked (like synergy) stopped. We suspected that the port to compiz would inherit it's better multimonitor support.

I built nux and unity from trunk tonight and my twinview behavior is now back to normal (except the top panel but I will file that as a separate bug) so at least on the desktop it's already well on it's way to parity. (When I get some time I'll try on a laptop)

Going to use this as a tracker bug for coming back before A2 to make sure multi-monitor support is feature-complete.

Lauch Monitor and extend desktop to two monitor still broken, the 2nd monitor can only see the mouse. But duplicate image on 2 monitor works fine for me. Currently using Dell Inspiron 1464 with IntelHD

Funnnny: what happens if you logout and back in after adding the second monitor?

For me, I had setup my 2nd monitor in a classic session, with my 1920x1200 external monitor to the left of my laptop's 1400x1050 monitor (aligned at the top). I then logged into a unity session, and saw the unity interface on my laptop monitor. However, interacting with the interface showed the pop ups over on the far left, and moving windows made the launcher vanish not when a window was near the launcher, but when it was near the left side of the left screen. I'll attach a screenshot of this as ext-left.png. I have the application menu open, showing (1) its bad position, and (2) that it is blank (I have to mouse over items in the menu to make them appear).

I then use the monitor app to position my external monitor to the right of the laptop screen. The unity interface does not move to its proper position at 0,0, and instead stays way over to the right, drawn in its original size and position relative to the original 0,0. I'm attaching this as ext-right.png.

I then logout and log back in. At this point, unity is sitting at the normal 0,0 position, and behaves reasonably well, though the blankness in the applications menu persists.

This is a ThinkPad T60 with an ATI X1300 (radeon driver):

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M52 [Mobility Radeon X1300]

I have HP Pavilion dm4t (Intel + ATI 5470HD hybrid) and sometimes xrandr shows the connected screens as:
- LVDS1 and VGA1
nowadays as:
- LVDS2 and VGA2
and today i managed to switch to ATI and restart X and then xrandr showed the screens as:
- LVDS-2 and VGA-2

Maybe the problem is also related to this behavior.

I have included a screenshot what it looks like when I plug in a bigger display.

You can see that the screen is split in two parts. This happens because one screen is 1366x768 and the other is 1680x1050. So the split happens on exactly 1366 and unity menu is shown in the middle of the larger display. You can drag windows above it (as shown).

I can't replicate this exact behaviour on my Lenovo x61, but am having issues related to tabbed windows (such as chrome, terminator, etc) whereby on the 'secondary' monitor (where the unity panel isn't being displayed), they work fine, but on the primary panel (unity panel) the windows are being resized such that the tabs are usually hidden behind the top panel bar. I'm unsure whether to log this as an additional bug or if anyone can point me to an existing bug that I can chime in on.

Update: In my issue, tabbing doesn't matter; no windows are being properly resized on the 'primary' monitor and are having their top sections obscured by the panel.

Today I have noticed some other behaviour, when hooking to laptop to lcd projector. The laptop resolution is 1366x768 and the projector is 1024x768, and immediately after connecting the cable i saw an extended destop background on the projector, but was not able to put mirror of the picture. After many tries with ARandR I succeeded, but later I was not able to disconnect the second screen even after unplugging the cable, it was as if some invisible layer was in front of the desktop and I was not able to click with the mouse on any gui component. Task switching was working with alt+tab and keyboard was working to type commands but I just could not click on them.

I can replicate the bug in my set up.

I get the correct resolution but when I extend the monitors I can only move the mouse to the secondary screen.

Also sometimes it stops prompting for the correct resolution on the secondary monitor preventing me from using it neither as a extended display nor alone

I get a ridiculous amount of bugs trying to use a secondary display not to mention extended desktop which I can't get to work at all. Sometimes it just shows the secondary screen black, sometimes it shows a panel, sometimes the primary screen has a wallpaper but the other doesn't and sometimes Unity stops working, the only constant thing is that it's always extremely laggy. Also sometimes It simply freezes the computer completely and can only make it work again restarting.

When I have a window on my primary screen, and I click maximize, it moves the window to the secondary screen, and makes it very tall, narrow, and skinny. I expected it to take up all the room possible on the current screen I was on, the primary screen.

This is very annoying, and unless its resolved, it makes me unlikely to use Unity once it rolls out, or just not even upgrade my production workstation.
I have two monitors, HDMI (1920x1080), and laptop screen. I just upgraded from 10.10 to 11.04 beta today.

I tried maximizing a few different programs, and each does something slightly different when I try to maximize it. For each of these I had the program open on the primary screen (screen with the Unity launcher) and the window was using much of the screen, but not all.

Chrome becomes very skinny and narrow, and goes to secondary monitor.
Software Center maximizes full screen on secondary monitor.
NetBeans disappears altogether. I gotta click its icon in the Unity launcher to make its title become the title bar, then I gotta double click the title bar to make it unmaximize and become visible (it goes back to it previous shape/size I had before clicking maximize).
Gedit goes to secondary screen maximized.
Terminal disappears just like NetBeans did.

Monitors are configured using NVIDIA X Server Settings, which works well enough at getting multiple monitors.

Peter,

Is your comment about the 10.10 Mutter Unity or 11.04 Compiz Unity?

Bilal,

Its 11.04 Compiz Unity I believe, it switched to my default when I upgraded to 11.04 beta. I had never used Unity under 10.10. For reference, when I select "Ubuntu Classic" as my default session in 11.04, window maximizing behaves properly. However, with "Ubuntu" (aka. Unity) as the default session, then the maximizing windows becomes a little screwy. As in instead of taking up all available pixels on current screen, it goes to other screen and does one of the weird things mentioned in previous post.

Let me know if there are any logs that you need.

I just wanted to add that on my machine, twinview works fine but sometimes what happens is that when I log in, the wallpaper on my primary monitor doesn't work.

As well, when I have 2 or 3 X screens running (I have 3 monitors), keypresses seem to be only caught on the first X screen and not on the other ones. For example, when I open the new folder on the second X screen and I press Alt+F4 to close it, it closes one of the windows I had open on the first X screen.

This is on 11.04 Unity.

Sorry, I don't know how to edit my last comment, I thought I'd be clearer on the last comment about the wallpapers. Basically the wallpaper gets cropped on the bottom and right by the same wallpaper at a completely different resolution. When I drag my mouse across the surface, the wallpaper gets refreshed and shows up properly again.

Can somebody please tell me how to get the unity panel to show up on my main monitor to the left?

I would also like to disable the information area on the panel on my secondary monitor (laptop, to the right) because it needlessly duplicates information.

I don't mind the panel being extended to the second monitor, as I usually have some application maximized there and recognize it is needed for application management.

Thanks for your help!

I fixed it with this very simple, yet somehow hard to come by xrandr trick!

This is my config:
xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 2960 x 1050, maximum 8192 x 8192
LVDS1 connected 1280x800+1680+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 287mm x 180mm
   1280x800 59.8*+
   1024x768 60.0
   800x600 60.3 56.2
   640x480 59.9
VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI1 connected 1680x1050+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 474mm x 296mm
   1680x1050 60.3*+
   1280x1024 75.0 60.0
   1440x900 75.0 59.9
   1280x960 60.0
   1152x864 75.0
   1280x720 60.0
   1024x768 75.1 60.0
   800x600 75.0 60.3
   640x480 75.0 60.0
   720x400 70.1

And this is the solution:
xrandr --output HDMI1 --primary

Tich, your xrandr trick works for me! Thanks. Do I need to run it every time I turn on my computer?
I sometimes work with a single display (the laptop) so if I add this line to a startup script, can it mess up my display when I use a single screen?

Thanks again!

Having the same issues here with the NVIDIA proprietary driver with separate X screens configured. The window borders are missing and I can't full screen any applications. They're also a bit unresponsive.

This is a really big issue and it affects a lot of people, as I see it this must be fixed before a final release.

Following the xrandr workaround proposed by Tich (thanks again!), maybe one can solve this problem by adding a selection box to the monitor preferences utility which lets the user select which screen is "primary". This seems like a small "bitesize" bug, or a "papercut"... never understood the difference... :-)

When I try to use dual monitor set up I'm geting a black screen in both while still seeing the mouse.

Disconnecting the display leaves me with a black screen in my laptop.

Curiously restarting makes both screens show Ubuntu turning off loading in correct resolution each.

This effects me with Ubuntu Natty latest updates as of 4/19/2011 @ 10:41PM
I have no unity/gnome panel and just a desktop with right click abilities, to remedy this issue I must install unity 2d so I can view fullscreen videos on my samsung tv. Enabling unity2d however does not enable the gnome panel or unity gnome panel.

This is setup as a seperate X session on a EVGA Nvidia GeForce 9600GT

Unity only works on one monitor and fullscreen video does not work

confirmed this on 15 other dell and custom pc's with nvidia cards

Same here. Nvidia card/proprietary driver. Second monitor is recognized and configured as separate X screen, I can see desktop and mouse with right click. No panel, no launcher, apps on second monitor cannot run in fullscreen... Oh, this is serious bug. No problem with previous versions.

I am running Ubuntu 11.04 and only had problems with multiple monitors with Unity (as I have already displayed above).
No problems with classic desktop (gnome panel) and now for 2-3 weeks I am running Gnome3 Shell, no problems at all!
Before switching to Gnome Shell, Unity behaviour was a bit buggy, sometimes not working at all (like mentioned) and sometimes I had to redo the change of monitor configuration several times until it worked.
For example:
1. plug second monitor to laptop
2. unity shows buggy placement of tray on the monitor
3. switch of second monitor from Monitors applet
4. switch on mirroring
5. switch off mirroring
6. switch on extend to screen
7. switch off extend to screen
...
Repeat 4-7 several times until it finally worked. Until the next reboot.

I am also affected on Natty 64bit on a Lenovo T410 with an Intel graphic card.

With Nvidia 460 GTX cannot run Unity with two monitors using Nvidia's two X session option.
The second screen only shows the wallpaper and I have right click ability but using commands like Alt+F2 bring up the command on the primary display. I need to switch to Ubuntu Classic mode to get the desired effect of two x sessions running.

I can confirm that this occurs in Xubuntu 11.04 as well with the nVidia proprietary drivers.

I can confirm that this occurs to me using the "final" production installation (11.04) as well. The secondary screen has black areas which seems to be available to opened applications but I cannot see. Please find five screenshots attached explaining what is wrong:

1. Setting both monitors to their native resolution results in black areas which seems to be there but I cannot see (laptop: 1280 x 800; external monitor 1280 x 1024)
2. Setting my external monitor to the correct resolution (1280 x 1024) and the laptop monitor to a slightly lower resolution (laptop: 1024 x 768) does not solve the matter
3. Set both monitors up as 1024 x 768 (the highest resolution denominator between the two screens) which seems to have made it work-able BUT the toolbar animation is not redrawn correctly and you can see "ghost"
4. More animation errors.
5. Switching back to just using one monitor (the laptop) resulted in an area of the monitor on the right not being accessible.

My set up is as follows:
Laptop Sony VAIO VGN-SZ60MN
Monitor Dell 19" (1280 1024)

All these worked in Ubuntu 10 and I have to say that being a newbie to this I did not expect production release to be this buggy. This has really dented my faith in Ubuntu and no doubt many other newbie as well. This is such a shame as I was just building my confidence up in using Linux instead of Windows.

I really hope that this will be given a high priority and fixed soon.

Many Thanks,
Hoi

hi,

have natty 11.04, 3 monitors, two cards NVIDIA 8200 onboard only hdmi used for TV , 8400 at PCI as primary

twin view at primary adapter work's for two screen's
can get even 4 screen's on but at secondary adapter keyboard
 is not seen bt application.

If Xinerama ON then all screen's are black and only mouse seen.

If hardware SLI not enabled look's working better.

Inpossible to configure two screen's and TV for output whit unity,
work's whit classic whitout problem's,...

Can not figure out how to open apllication at TV, secondary adapter,
whit unity,...

joni

I experience the same as Robert Drozda. nVidia, "separate X screen", and the second screen (screen1) is useless. I can see it, I see the wallpaper image, I can move the mouse cursor and right-click on the background. However, I see no way to place an application on it.

In summary, the second app launcher and status bar for this screen is missing.

Is this the same bug? If not, has it already been filed elsewhere on Launchpad?

@Torsten Bronger, @Robert Drozda: I have the same issue with Unity and the proprietary nvidia driver when set to "separate X screen" (Xinerama disabled).

No resolution problems. The 'screen locked' screen sometimes appears on the secondary monitor and works without fault. However there is no window chrome or launchbar. I can open applications on the secondary display using a terminal on the primary "$ xterm -display :0.1 &" although they appear with no window chrome and I cannot activate them (cursor does nothing).

Apologies if this is a different bug!

For the problems with the useless secondary X screen, I filed a separate bug #779867.

@Torsten Bronger: I had filed a separate bug report for the exact issue you mentioned weeks ago and it got merged back to this bug report.

The comments make me think that they are talking about two issues. I think that my problem is rather high-level whereas the reporter's problem is rather low-level. Be that as it may, the initial description of this bug doesn't describe my issue. If the underlying bug really is the same, my report can be marked as a duplicate.

I have the same issues. On 11.04 final Unity multiple monitor configuration from my Asus N73 laptop is completely unusable. In Classic everything works fine.

This might actually be a compiz related issue. I'm currently trying out the Fedora 15 beta and had no issues with missing borders and non functional keyboard until I installed compiz. After installing compiz I'm experiencing the same kind of issues as when running Ubuntu.

If I run xfwm4 --replace the borders reappears and the second screen starts to work as it should.

I think a bug I am getting may be related to this one on Natty with Unity. I am using an older HP Notebook with the Ubuntu provided ATI drivers (no proprietary drivers available). When I plug in a monitor, it mirrors the desktop and programs fine.

However, the first thing noticed is that the search and shortcuts menu icon in the upper left above the Unity launch bar is missing and clicking that area does nothing. As of now, the shutdown menu works. However, If I open a program and then close or minimize it, the classic menu now appears on both screens: File - Edit - View - Places - Help. As I am using Unity and not classic, these headings are not normally there. That in itself is not annoying, but while the notification / menu bar shows the above menu headings, the menus do not appear on either the notebook or monitor screen when clicked. This now includes the shutdown menu not working. If I open a program again, the program menu headings now appear and the program menus work properly, but never the OS menus. Luckily I kept the terminal in the launcher so I can shutdown running the sudo halt command. Doing an empty selection on the desktop does not work.

I can't get an overview of this bug right now.
Can anyone from my screenshot tell me if this is the bug?

@Jimmy

That is how it appears to me as well.

Dual screen with Unity and Natty, 64-bit version on a Lenovo Thinkpad X201s. Intel graphics chip. Display port used for the external monitor at work, VGA at home, the same symptoms.

With the external monitor logically to the right of the laptop, everything is just fine.
With the external monitor logically above the laptop (corresponds to the physical setup), some rather serious issues.
  Sometimes parts of the monitors are black/inaccessible, similar to the examples in this bug.
  Sometimes the desktop is ok (all accessible and visible), but window resizing at the bottom border results in closing the window, clikcing an icon in the launch bar with several windows open displays selection images, but they do nothing when clicked on.

Testing with the monitors stacked in various ways, including vertically, might shed some light on the underlying problems.

I've managed to fix the problem by having a Gnome startup script that contains:

DISPLAY=":0.1" compiz --replace &

This starts compiz on the secondary display and resolves all issues that I had with the mouse, keyboard and window decorations.

It works partially for me. Display=:0.1 compiz --replace & enabled window decorations, mouse clicks and apps can run fullscreen. Still no panel and launcher on secondary X screen.

I have the same issue as described in #36. I managed a partial workaround, which works most, but not all the time.

I have a keyboard shortcut set up to open a terminal. From there, I open 'gnome-display-properties', which usually sets the resolution on both screens when it opens. If not, deselecting 'same image on both monitors' and setting the correct resolution for each sometimes works.
After setting the resolutions, the screen is still unusable, with the black sections, and incorrectly-offset viewport problems. These can usually be fixed with a 'compiz --replace &'.

I have had an issue with the screens going black after starting 'gnome-display-properties'.
Sometimes, but not often, I can run 'DISPLAY=0.0 metacity --replace' from a VTY (Ctrl-Alt-F1..6), which will get metacity running. From there, I can run 'compiz --replace', at which point Unity and Compiz appear to behave.
I usually need to reboot if my screens go black. Sometimes the reboot fails, at which point I need to force the power off.

I have an HP 6730b Laptop with an Intel Intel Mobile 4 Series card (GM45 Chipset, 512MB RAM), running 11.04 64-bit.

The workaround from #51 worked for me. Thanks @zishmusic .

Sometimes it helps to use alt and left click drag so you can move windows even if you can't see their title bar.

My video card (Ati Radeon 9600 Pro) means that Ubuntu is completely unusable for me.

- Massive artefacting, as if no redraw was happening.
- No window focus on the secondary screen.
- Unity menu shown on the left of the right screen. so in the centre.

The situation was slightly improved by disabling opengl but not significantly. Only gnome classic gave anything useful.

The workaround in post #49 seemed to do the trick for me. I'm using 11.04 with ubuntu classic.

I just created a simple script that contained only the line "DISPLAY=":0.1" compiz --replace &", placed it in my /usr/local/bin, chmod +x to make it executable, and added it to my startup applications list.

This is totally broken. I should reboot after I connect the second monitor to my laptop. I had to do this twice a day!!!

The latest version of Unity in natty-proposed fixes most of the multi-monitor issues. The remaining bugs are being tracked as separate bugs. The bug is being closed because there are other bug reports for specific multi-monitor issues.

Also the issue wont be fixed in Ubuntu-10.10 as the version of Unity there is not being worked by developers anymore.

Perhaps it would be an idea to post an overview of those bugs here?
This bug is kinda a sink for broken monitor support issue, isn't it?

Jimmy did you try Ubuntu-11.04 with the proposed version of Unity first?

On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 2:22 AM, Jimmy Merrild Krag <email address hidden> wrote:
> Perhaps it would be an idea to post an overview of those bugs here?
> This bug is kinda a sink for broken monitor support issue, isn't it?
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to unity.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/661450
>
> Title:
>  Support for multiple monitors broken
>
> Status in System76:
>  New
> Status in Unity:
>  Invalid
> Status in “unity” package in Ubuntu:
>  Invalid
>
> Bug description:
>  Binary package hint: unity
>
>  In Ubuntu Netbook 10.10 running on a Lenovo S10, support for multiple
>  monitors is completely broken. Once another monitor is plugged in, the
>  Monitors settings program successfully detects its name and
>  resolution, but it fails to extend the workspace to fill that monitor.
>
>  Instead, it can only show the cursor at the corner of the second
>  monitor if it is placed there, but the mouse cursor does not "enter"
>  the second monitor.
>
>  If one tries to change the relative positions of the monitors, both
>  screens lock. If one sets the monitors to display the same image, the
>  same thing happens and it only comes back after a reboot.
>
>  ProblemType: Bug
>  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
>  Package: unity 0.2.46-0ubuntu5
>  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-22.34-generic 2.6.35.4
>  Uname: Linux 2.6.35-22-generic i686
>  NonfreeKernelModules: wl
>  Architecture: i386
>  Date: Fri Oct 15 17:30:06 2010
>  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Netbook 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release i386 (20101007)
>  ProcEnviron:
>   LANGUAGE=pt_BR:pt:en
>   LANG=pt_BR.utf8
>   SHELL=/bin/bash
>  SourcePackage: unity
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/system76/+bug/661450/+subscriptions
>

Yes, I installed the proposed version of Unity, but I have not had the chance to test it yet. However, that was not the point of my question.
If this bug is invalid anyway, and there are separate bugs for each issue, then a post linking to these separate bugs would be found by people googling their way to this bug, and they could go on from there, and they wouldn't post to this bug asking for status.

bug 795454 bug 795458 bug 795459 bug 750481 were fixes for
dual-monitor cases in the latest SRU in natty proposed. Read the
latest comments of Daniel Manrique who tested the fixes and pointed of
a few remaining issues still, I thought they were reported but they
are not. Would be nice if you report them.

On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 8:06 PM, Jimmy Merrild Krag <email address hidden> wrote:
> Yes, I installed the proposed version of Unity, but I have not had the chance to test it yet. However, that was not the point of my question.
> If this bug is invalid anyway, and there are separate bugs for each issue, then a post linking to these separate bugs would be found by people googling their way to this bug, and they could go on from there, and they wouldn't post to this bug asking for status.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to unity.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/661450
>
> Title:
>  Support for multiple monitors broken
>
> Status in System76:
>  New
> Status in Unity:
>  Invalid
> Status in “unity” package in Ubuntu:
>  Invalid
>
> Bug description:
>  Binary package hint: unity
>
>  In Ubuntu Netbook 10.10 running on a Lenovo S10, support for multiple
>  monitors is completely broken. Once another monitor is plugged in, the
>  Monitors settings program successfully detects its name and
>  resolution, but it fails to extend the workspace to fill that monitor.
>
>  Instead, it can only show the cursor at the corner of the second
>  monitor if it is placed there, but the mouse cursor does not "enter"
>  the second monitor.
>
>  If one tries to change the relative positions of the monitors, both
>  screens lock. If one sets the monitors to display the same image, the
>  same thing happens and it only comes back after a reboot.
>
>  ProblemType: Bug
>  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
>  Package: unity 0.2.46-0ubuntu5
>  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-22.34-generic 2.6.35.4
>  Uname: Linux 2.6.35-22-generic i686
>  NonfreeKernelModules: wl
>  Architecture: i386
>  Date: Fri Oct 15 17:30:06 2010
>  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Netbook 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release i386 (20101007)
>  ProcEnviron:
>   LANGUAGE=pt_BR:pt:en
>   LANG=pt_BR.utf8
>   SHELL=/bin/bash
>  SourcePackage: unity
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/system76/+bug/661450/+subscriptions
>

Thanks!
I have only experienced bug 750481 myself, but will report if I find further issues when I get time to test.

Is this still an issue? I stumbled over this bug when looking at some other issue, and I don't have it myself.