On KDE 4.2.1 (4.2.2 not yet available in Slackware), I am unable to login when I have an external monitor connected to my laptop.

In the final stage of login (ie the final icon of the login-status), the screen turns white and I am then told that Plasma has crashed. Then the system is stuck and I need to Zap X to get back to login.

Same xorg.conf works great on xfce, fluxbox, fvwm and others, so I suspect I have done something wrong in my KDE setup.

Has anyone else experienced this or has some ideas on how to troubleshoot?

System is a Lenovo X200 laptop with Intel graphics and a Lenovo external screen connected with VGA-cable. Xorg version is 1.4.2

Thanks in advance for any insight.

You should be able to use Alt + F2 to get a Konsole running. Once you have, try starting Plasma manually. Please also install debugging packages so you can generate a valid backtrace.

Also, if you connect the screen after Plasma has started, does it still crash?

bcooksley wrote:You should be able to use Alt + F2 to get a Konsole running. Once you have, try starting Plasma manually. Please also install debugging packages so you can generate a valid backtrace.

Also, if you connect the screen after Plasma has started, does it still crash?

Thanks for quick and spot-on response.
Finally got track of what happened. My xorg.conf had a few errors in it causing the two screens to overlap. This caused plasma to be confused about the location of the widgets etc, and thus it crashed. When I removed plasmarc I was once again able to login.

Having fixed one problem, there is one to go though:

I cannot find where to configure which screen is the "primary" screen. Right now, the menu bar etc shows up on the laptop LVDS rather than the external monitor. Is there any way in KDE4 to specify on which display this should be, similar to how it was done in KDE3 ?
(also to set different wallpapers on the different screens)

Or is this something due in 4.3 or later perhaps?

Yalla-One wrote:Having fixed one problem, there is one to go though:

I cannot find where to configure which screen is the "primary" screen. Right now, the menu bar etc shows up on the laptop LVDS rather than the external monitor. Is there any way in KDE4 to specify on which display this should be, similar to how it was done in KDE3 ?
(also to set different wallpapers on the different screens)

Or is this something due in 4.3 or later perhaps?

On my Twinview setup, the panel (I guess that's what you mean with "menu bar"?) always show up on the left screen by default (right screen is primary). I've configured left/right and primary directly in xorg.conf, don't know if there's any GUI option for it.

If you want the panel to show up on the other screen, can't you just drag it (Unlock Widgets, click on cashew in the panel and drag "Screen Edge") or create a new panel there?

Using different wallpapers should be as easy as right click on desktop -> Appearance (or Desktop) Settings.

Hans wrote:On my Twinview setup, the panel (I guess that's what you mean with "menu bar"?) always show up on the left screen by default (right screen is primary). I've configured left/right and primary directly in xorg.conf, don't know if there's any GUI option for it.

How do you configure that in xorg.conf? I manage to get the kdm login screen to display on my right (correct primary) but the panel still shows on the left...

Hans wrote:If you want the panel to show up on the other screen, can't you just drag it (Unlock Widgets, click on cashew in the panel and drag "Screen Edge") or create a new panel there?

I tried that, and now plasma refuses to load again.. there's clearly something unstable in my setup, as when I run plasma manually as per bcooksley's suggestion, I get the following error:

Code: Select all

QLayout: Attempting to add QLayout "" to QWidget "", which already has a layout
plasma(5154): Communication problem with  "plasma" , it probably crashed.
Error message was:  "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply" : " "Message did not receive a reply (timeout by message bus)" "

Hans wrote:Using different wallpapers should be as easy as right click on desktop -> Appearance (or Desktop) Settings.

Nope - there's no option for the different screens - just the normal change wallpaper which changes for both monitors. Can't find any separation there.

Thanks much for answering!

Please file a bug for those crashes. Plasma should fail more gracefully. I believe there is a GUI in System Settings > Display > Multiple Displays.

Yalla-One wrote:

Hans wrote:On my Twinview setup, the panel (I guess that's what you mean with "menu bar"?) always show up on the left screen by default (right screen is primary). I've configured left/right and primary directly in xorg.conf, don't know if there's any GUI option for it.

How do you configure that in xorg.conf? I manage to get the kdm login screen to display on my right (correct primary) but the panel still shows on the left...

We need to all complain LOUDLY about Plasma ignoring user settings and always defaulting to the left screen. I have tried convincing the Plasma team several times that it's just stupid to do what they are doing but they fail to listen to me. I don't even think any of the Plasma team use a multi-monitor setup as their primary development machine so they don't know how bad it is... :-@

bcooksley wrote:Please file a bug for those crashes. Plasma should fail more gracefully. I believe there is a GUI in System Settings > Display > Multiple Displays.

Thanks - give me a few days until my distribution updates to 4.2.2 so I can give an as accurate and up-to-date report as possible. Will file then.

Dunno if this has changed from 4.2.1 to 4.2.2, but last I entered System Settings->Display, there was no "Multiple Displays" option. Unfortunately I cannot test that anymore, since System-Settings crashes as soon as I choose "Display"

When starting systemsettings from console, I get a plethora of these message when entering "Display":

Code: Select all

X Error: BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation) 2
  Extension:    156 (RANDR)
  Minor opcode: 21 ()
  Resource id:  0x20


Guess there's more than one bug-filing in my future...

Zack - in addition to the two above mentioned bugs, is there an existing multi-display bug to vote for covering this? My search for "multiple displays" and friends on bugs.kde.org came up empty, so either any existing reports are using terms with which I am not familiar, or there is no official attention on this...

Yalla-One wrote:How do you configure that in xorg.conf? I manage to get the kdm login screen to display on my right (correct primary) but the panel still shows on the left...

As said, Plasma ialways places the panel on the left screen regardless if it's primary or not. I have
Option "TwinViewOrientation" "RightOf"
in xorg.conf.

Yalla-One wrote:Nope - there's no option for the different screens - just the normal change wallpaper which changes for both monitors. Can't find any separation there.

Thanks much for answering!

Does it change for _both_ monitors? OK, something is definitely wrong here. I don't know if it helps, but could you please share your xorg.conf?

Zarin wrote:We need to all complain LOUDLY about Plasma ignoring user settings and always defaulting to the left screen. I have tried convincing the Plasma team several times that it's just stupid to do what they are doing but they fail to listen to me. I don't even think any of the Plasma team use a multi-monitor setup as their primary development machine so they don't know how bad it is... :-@

I complained once, guess I wasn't loud enough. =P

Hans wrote:As said, Plasma ialways places the panel on the left screen regardless if it's primary or not. I have Option "TwinViewOrientation" "RightOf" in xorg.conf.

Guess I misunderstood - I have something similar...
Don't dare playing along with panel placement anymore right now, since it causes so much crashes at the moment and takes an eternity to fix... Guess we'll have to follow Zack's advise and ask loudly and politely for better configuration options and support for multiple monitors.

Hans wrote:Does it change for _both_ monitors? OK, something is definitely wrong here. I don't know if it helps, but could you please share your xorg.conf?

Yeah, it changes for both and there's nowhere I can select what goes where by pointing/selecting VGA over LVDS for instance.
I did however start systemsettings as root $(kdesu systemsettings) and the only thing I can do in the Display section is randr stuff for rotating/mirroring etc. However, it now displays the two screens correctly next to each other without a gap and with correct sizes. No overlap or similar.
I put my xorg.conf at pastebin in order not to spam this forum with too long posts:
http://pastebin.slackadelic.com/12160

Possible Problem
On my system I have been unable to login (plasma crash++) on my laptop after I disconnect the external monitor and restart X with widgets on the desktop.
I suspect this is because Plasma stores widget positions relative to upper left corner, and naturally, when the 24" external screen is gone, those positions no longer exist, and then plasma gets confused.

What I would really like is for KDE4 / Plasma to be a bit more laptop-friendly in this regard, so that it somehow can understand that there should be some different settings depending on the screen (and other stuff) plugged in at login... Or even better, with RandR, this could actually be hot-pluggable, so that when something new such as a monitor arrives, voilla- remember that this is the great screen, so now put those widgets where they belong. At a minimum, don't crash...

Anyone else experienced such crashes and have some thoughts around how to handle such external monitor hotpugging? Maybe now's the time to spin up ideas for KDE 4.4?

Please search for and file bugs for those issues if they are reproducible in KDE 4.2.2, and have not already been filed.

It should be possible to drag the panel to the other screen, if it crashes then that's different to what I was ranting about. Report the crash as a crash report and separately wish the default screen = primary screen as a feature request if you really want to do that (But I emphasis that it's a separate issue).

The strange thing is that you should get two different containments[1] on your screens. That means that the right click -> Appearance Settings should be independent of each other - you can set different settings for your two containments. You should also be able to swap containments between your screens if you want to.

Now it sounds like you have a large containment covering both screens.

[1] You can think of it as a thing with a background (your wallpaper) that contains your widgets.

Hans wrote:Now it sounds like you have a large containment covering both screens.

Definitely. However, according to both Intel's official wiki and plenty other resources, my xorg.conf should be the way to define and use two monitors. Does my xorg.conf differ much from yours?

Will be interesting to see if the plasma issues are still present when 4.2.2 comes to Slackware - if so I'll definitely file a couple of bug reports.

Could you please try to add
Option "Xinerama" "on"
under Section "ServerLayout" in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.