[ltp] switching output on t61 (nvidia quadro 140 NVS)

Lenz Grimmer linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
Tue, 2 Sep 2008 17:22:31 +0200


Hi Andreas,

On Tue, Sep 2, 2008 at 10:26 AM, Andreas Jellinghaus <aj@dungeon.inka.de> wrote:

> like many users of T61 with nvidia quadro 140 nvs I'm annoyed,
> that we can't easily switch our display output. instead we need
> to start nvidia-settings, click on the displays, click detect
> display, click on the disabled, click configure, select twinview,
> click ok, click on the old enabled, click configure, select disabled
> click ok, click in the confirm window on "disable", click apply,
> wait till the switch is done and we can see the result, click on
> the apply window to confirm the change, click quit, click on the
> quit dialog to confirm the quit.

Indeed, this is quite a nuisance. I have actually reverted back to
using the "nv" driver when being on the road to give presentations
with my T61 - it supports suspend to disk and RAM and I can easily
switch the display output using "xrandr".

> attached is a command line too to change the video output.
> not questions, simply done. if the other output is not attached,
> your fault. (hint: cursor up and "enter" will run it again).

Cool! I will give it a try. Thanks for that!

> I tried to add this to thinkwiki.org to the video output
> switching page, but uploading a makefile and a c file doesn't
> work. any better idea?

FWIW, I have now commited your attached files to a Bazaar repo and
pushed it to Launchpad:

https://code.launchpad.net/~lenzgr/+junk/switch-display

I'd be glad to give you permissions to commit into this one directly,
in case you plan to further improve it.

> also maybe you know how I can configure my linux (kubuntu 8.04)
> to run this command when I press some key? (the fn+f7 isn't working
> so maybe we can use that one? :) )

You first would have to figure out if acpid or some other process
catches this event. AFAIK you can also configure the X Server if it
should listen to these events or not, but I have not looked into that
closely yet. I prefer switching via the commandline :)

> if anyone wants to improve this command, please feel free to do so.
> for some users a gui box with a confirm (and a reset if that isn't
> done within 20 seconds) might be nice.

Good idea! A shell script using "kdialog" would be a simple first step
solution for this.

-- 
Bye,
 LenZ
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