My problem is, as the title explains, KDE doesn't recognize it when I attach a monitor.
The reason I'm asking this is because it is claimed KDE has this feature already, but it doesn't work for me.

After attaching it, when I click the "Quick Display Configuration" icon on the system tray, it shows the quick display configuration dialog and also shows a dialog asking "new monitor is recognized, do you want to display quick display configuration screen" etc. So it recognizes the display only after clicking the quick display configuration icon.

my system:
debian jessie
kde workspace 4.11.12
kde applications 4.14.1
nvidia binary driver 340.46

in the "Service Manager" section of "Startup and Shutdown" settings, both "Display Management change monitor" and "KScreen 2" checkboxes are ticked and they look like started.

How can I make it automatically recognize the monitor when I attach it?

My system comprises HP EliteBook with Nvidia 3000M graphics. What I have experienced recently is than on startup the system thinks that there are two displays attached to the notebook. This is seen at first on the logon screen; the Nvidia sign is displayed for a short time across half of the display only, and afterwards when KDE starts an empty display is presented. All the applications ran in the second display (which in fact does not exist at all), thus, invisible to me. I can not do anything. I managed once, I do not know how, to run Nvidia settings in the display I was able to see and manage, and the settings revealed information about two displays. I managed to mark one as inactive and to mark the other as default. On clicking the Apply button the desktop appeared on the actual display. However, on the reboot everything returned to the state as described above. So right now, I am not able to do anything with said notebook.
This weird behaviour occurred some month or so ago when Nvidia driver has been updated, while before that everything ran smoothly. At that time I used KDE 4.12..1, now I installed opensuse 13.2 with KDE 5, hoping that would solve the problems. Well, nothing has been solved, things are the same and non-usable.

Please advice

as a 1st step just to get functional can you disable one of the graphic chips in the bios?

the laptop function key to switch monitors does anything?

do you have a different desktop environment installed (xfce, gnome, openSUE has icewm or twm as a backup de) if you login with one of these do you still have the issue? this would id it as a non-KDE problem

Thank you for the tips. I checked BIOS but there is no option to disable graphic card since Nvidia 3000M is the only card in the notebook (i.e. the onboard card). Trying other window manager but KDE gave same results. When trying with safe mode start the desktop gave the following errors: KWIN is disabled. I can not get rid of this message.
The main problem is that at the very start of the login procedure, i.e. at the time when a small menu is displayed with users and you have to select the user which is to be logged in, it is something like kdm or similar, not sure, when the described problem occurs. In fact, the machine stops with a blank screen, just showing a desktop background, no menu to select user is displayed since it is shown in an imaginary display to the right side of the notebook. I can of course enter the password and log in, since the user name is pre-selected, but once the machine is up and running no icons are displayed nor the panel. To be honest, the panel disappears regardless of that I restored it several times.
Here is additional weird thing appearing during the boot time. Immediately upon boot, for a short period of time it is displayed:
[some numbers like 8.50... or 7.20...] kvm: disabled by BIOS. When working in KDE with nouevau driver KDE died on several occasions in a manner, that the screen turned black and a hard restart was needed.
For your information, problems started on the notebook with the version of Nvidia driver 340.40, I guess. Now, version 340.58 is available, yet with the same results as described.
Oh yes, and mouse is constantly freezing, I can move cursor for just a short time period and it stops responding. I have to do a click and it moves again for a couple of seconds. Be noted, I reinstalled opensuse 13.2 twice already during this weekend hoping that reinstall will solve problems. Obvious it did not. I will reinstall it once again and select KDE 4.12 instead of KDE5 and hope that at least the problems with mouse and screen blocking will be gone.

if you have an Intel chip I believe there will be an integrated gpu, thinking maybe dual gpu's could be part of the issue

confused about your statement about "window managers" you mean under KDE instead of Kwin? or desktop environments like Gnome?

does the display keyboard switch do anything (be fn+F4 or something like that)

if it's a Nvidia issue they have a Linux forum https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/board/98/

remember Plasma 5 is still in development and if you want a stable environment and the ability to test Plasma 5 see this thread (wolfie323 has done a great jb getting this to work) https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread. ... 6fe66f1943

don't think the KVM message is relevant see http://askubuntu.com/questions/263179/g ... ed-by-bios

can you post file /etc/X11/xorg.conf

nvidia is XRandr compatible for quite some time.
You can disable the absent screen on the command line.

Get "somehow" access to a textshell (Konsole, VT1, ssh) and

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$ export DISPLAY=:0
$ xrandr -q


It will list the screen config - let's assume the not connected external one is VGA-0:

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$ xrandr --output VGA-0 --off


This may fail from VT1, in this case, prepend "sleep 5;" and move back to VT7 in the 5 seconds until xrandr runs.

The auto-deactivating touchpad is either the synaptics palm-detection running wild (run "synclient PalmDetect=0") or the device is accessed via USB and enters power saving (check "powertop")

@Bill, the error message about "KWIN" being disabled, is the "KWin" message that the compositor was disabled (because he started in failsafe mode - what won't get him anything regarding the multiscreen isse, for it exists pre-session already)

Thanks guys for all the sugestions. However, no luck at all. The use of xrandr made no difference. In addition, there is no xorg.conf file on my notebook. Also, in BIOS is no sign of any graphic card. The Nvidia 3000M is onboard card, and not any Intel based card.

re: no xorg.conf https://wiki.debian.org/Xorg see the "what if I don't have section ......"

something similar (?) in jessie http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions ... e-problems

what happens if you attach an external monitor?

What's the output of "xrandr -q" then?

Output of "xrandr -q" is as follows:
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 16384 x 16384
VGA-0 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 383mm x 215mm
1920x1080 60.00*+
LVDS-0 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 383mm x 215mm
1920x1080 60.00*+
DP-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-3 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-4 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-5 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-6 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

Same output remains also after the sugested xrandr procedure.

As to the xorg.conf, here is the output of "locate xorg":
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.install
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/00-keyboard.conf
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-libvnc.conf
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/11-evdev.conf
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-monitor.conf
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-screen.conf
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-vmmouse.conf
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-wacom.conf
/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d
/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf
/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-quirks.conf
/usr/share/man/man5/xorg.conf.5.gz
/usr/share/man/man5/xorg.conf.d.5.gz

That's the most weird.

a) The output suggests the two screens to be in clone mode, the virtual screen is only 1920x1080 - there should be no screen space used beyond this area
-> what's the output of "xwininfo -root"?
b) The failure to call "xrandr --VGA-0 --off" quite puzzles me, try "xrandr --output LVDS-0 --primary; sleep 1; xrandr --VGA-0 --off"
c) A screen on VGA-0 is indeed "detected" - either it's added statically (possibly in one of the xorg snippets)

Those look promising:
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-monitor.conf
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-screen.conf

Can you post their contents?

"xwininfo -root" gave the following:
xwininfo: Window id: 0x2ea (the root window) (has no name)

Absolute upper-left X: 0
Absolute upper-left Y: 0
Relative upper-left X: 0
Relative upper-left Y: 0
Width: 1920
Height: 1080
Depth: 24
Visual: 0x21
Visual Class: TrueColor
Border width: 0
Class: InputOutput
Colormap: 0x20 (installed)
Bit Gravity State: NorthWestGravity
Window Gravity State: NorthWestGravity
Backing Store State: NotUseful
Save Under State: no
Map State: IsViewable
Override Redirect State: no
Corners: +0+0 -0+0 -0-0 +0-0
-geometry 1920x1080+0+0

On the other hand
etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-monitor.conf
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-screen.conf
have everything commented out.

In addition to my previous post here are some more observation.

Entering "xrandr --output LVDS-0 --primary; sleep 1; xrandr --VGA-0 --off" produced an error "xrandr: unrecognized option '--VGA-0' Try 'xrandr --help' for more information." I tried also with "-VGA-0" and "VGA-0" and got the same error.

Kinfocentre/Graphical Information/OpenGL shows correct OpenGL/ES version of the Nvidia driver but "3D accelerator" is unknown and also the "Kernel module" is unknown. As far as I know this is not good. Is there any part of the kernel missing. Oh yes, till today, I used Nvidia drivers from the openSUSE repository. Right now I deinstalled it and installed the driver from the Nvidia site (NVIDIA.something.run). Same result.

Besides, any idea about the mouse freezing on inactivity. I have to click every time I want to use it.

The root window is 1920x1080+0+0, so if anything is out of sight, that's a client bug.
It is however *extremely* unlikely that KWin would place anything out of this area (not by default and requests to be positioned out of sight are ignored)
Can you please start an application that ends up out of sight and then call:

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xwininfo -tree -root


and post the output (in "code" tags, it's a lot of text) as well as mentioning the window you believe to be "on the other screen"?


> xrandr: unrecognized option '--VGA-0' Try 'xrandr --help' for more information.
My bad, would be
"xrandr --output LVDS-0 --primary; sleep 1; xrandr --output VGA-0 --off"

> Besides, any idea about the mouse freezing on inactivity. I have to click every time I want to use it.
As mentioned before:

The auto-deactivating touchpad is either the synaptics palm-detection running wild (run "synclient PalmDetect=0") or the device is accessed via USB and enters power saving (check "powertop")