Description of problem: Booting laptop in dock with lid closed and attached monitor does not display login screen on attached monitor. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Kernel Linux 3.6.1-1.fc17.x86_64 How reproducible: Every time. Behavior began in the last 2-3 days; before that it worked as expected. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Boot laptop in dock with lid closed and external monitor attached. 2. 3. Actual results: Boot messages appear on external monitor as expected. When boot finishes, the external monitor is showing the secondary screen. Have to open the laptop lid and login using the laptop display. After logging in, the system automatically goes to mirrored displays as desired. Expected results: System boots and can login on the external monitor. Additional info: Lenovo T500. The laptop display is being reset to minimum brightness, which makes it very difficult to login - very difficult to see the mouse cursor. Can't change screen brightness until login is completed.
When using kernel-3.5.6-1.fc17.x86_64 login screen appears on correct display.
That makes sense - this problem just occurred. It looks like a change sometime between kernel-3.5.6-1.fc17.x86_64 and 3.6.1-1.fc17.x86_64.
Here's a way to solve the problem: 1. open a terminal and do a 'cp .config/monitor.xml .config/monitor.xml.org' to save your display settings. 2. open the gnome-control-center, click on diplays settings and change the settimgs to mirrored mode. Do not forget to apply the settings before closing. 3. in a terminal do as root do 'cp /home/$USER/.config/monitor.xml /etc/gnome-settings-daemon/xrandr/'. $USER is to be replaced by your user account name 4. in a terminal as $USER do 'cp .config/monitor.xml.org .config/monitor.xml' to restore your original settings. $USER is to be replaced by your user account name 5. log out, reboot and test the whole thing.
That worked! Was this some sort of file corruption problem?
No corruption, rather a missing file. With the operations you created a file that explicitly told GDM what you want. If the file is not there it picks one display to show the login mask. Maybe the order of displays changed with the new kernel I did not dive further, because the monitor configuration file in etc solved the problem.
One thing about this that is curious: When the laptop is started with the lid closed and an external monitor attached via the VGA port, but the unit is not docked, the login display appears on the external monitor as expected, even though /etc/gnome-settings-daemon/xrandr/ is empty. On another laptop, the main screen appears on the external monitor even after logging in, even though $HOME/.config/monitors.xml doesn't exist. Also, I'm not sure "cloned" is the right setting, because the resolution won't necessarily be correct (though I suppose it doesn't matter that much for a login screen). Wouldn't one want the external display to be primary when the lid is closed? That's how I currently have my (logged in) display settings in $HOME/.config/monitors.xml.
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Please update Fedora version number. This is still an issue, at least in F18.
Fedora 17 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2013-07-30. Fedora 17 is no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug. If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.