Config

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'''In Ubuntu 8.04''', there is unfortunately still one manual configuration step required to create dual-screen layouts, which is to add a Virtual framebuffer size. The size needs to be equal or greater than the maximum combined size of your displays. For example, if you have two 1920x1200 monitors you wish to put side-by-side, you would add a Virtual line like this: '''In Ubuntu 8.04''' and earlier, there is unfortunately still one manual configuration step required to create dual-screen layouts, which is to add a Virtual framebuffer size. The size needs to be equal or greater than the maximum combined size of your displays. For example, if you have two 1920x1200 monitors you wish to put side-by-side, you would add a Virtual line like this:

Once upon a time, long long ago, Linux users had to manually configure their X Window System in order to use graphical programs. Then came Linux distributions which provided install scripts that (most of the time) created a basic configuration file for the user, that they could then customize. Today, we are transitioning towards a "config-less" X, that figures out everything those install scripts used to, but all inside X itself.

Of course, such a transition is not without some rough patches, and it's possible users may find themselves in a spot where they may still need to do some manual configuration. And that is what this page is for.

Display Configuration

Setting up dual-screen using XRandR 1.2

If you have an ATI, Intel, or Nvidia video card with multiple outputs (such as a VGA + DVI) or a laptop with a secondary output port you can set up a dual screen configuration using the X Resize, Rotate and Reflection Extension (XRandR 1.2).

The easiest way to do this is using the Screen Resolution GNOME applet under System > Preferences (or run gnome-display-properties). This tool doesn't modify your xorg.conf, but rather applies the changes dynamically during GNOME startup. To customize your dual-head setup, simply drag and drop where you want your displays.

In Ubuntu 8.04 and earlier, there is unfortunately still one manual configuration step required to create dual-screen layouts, which is to add a Virtual framebuffer size. The size needs to be equal or greater than the maximum combined size of your displays. For example, if you have two 1920x1200 monitors you wish to put side-by-side, you would add a Virtual line like this:

Section "Screen"
        Identifier      "Default Screen"
        Device          "Configured Video Device"
        DefaultDepth    24
        SubSection "Display"
            Depth           24
            Virtual         3840 1200
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Note that setting Virtual to a large but still conceivable value may result in an inability to use hardware acceleration on some cards.

Manual Configuration

An alternative is to set it up manually in xorg.conf. You might want to do this if you're not running GNOME, or if you want it to take effect earlier on in the bootup sequence, or if you want to trick things out beyond what the GUI tool is capable of.

Here is an example xorg.conf setting up dual-head with XRandR in Ubuntu 8.04:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Generic Keyboard"
        Driver          "kbd"
        Option          "XkbRules"      "xorg"
        Option          "XkbModel"      "pc105"
        Option          "XkbLayout"     "us"
        Option          "XkbOptions"    "lv3:ralt_switch"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Configured Mouse"
        Driver          "mouse"
        Option          "CorePointer"
        Option          "Emulate3Buttons"       "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Configured Video Device"
        BusID           "PCI:1:0:0"
        Option          "Monitor-VGA-0" "Left Monitor"
        Option          "Monitor-DVI-0" "Right Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier      "Left Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier      "Right Monitor"
        Option          "Right Of" "Left Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier      "Default Screen"
        Device          "Configured Video Device"
        DefaultDepth    24
        SubSection "Display"
            Depth           24
            Virtual         3840 1200
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier      "Default Layout"
        Screen          "Default Screen"
        InputDevice     "Generic Keyboard"
        InputDevice     "Configured Mouse"
EndSection

There are three important things to note that you may have to alter.

The first is the BusID; look at the output of lspci | grep VGA to see what Bus ID your video card is on. You may even be able to omit this entirely.

The second is the Virtual setting in the Display SubSection. In general, this should be set to the total size of your combined screen. So if you have two 1920x1200 monitors you plan to put side by side, this would be (1920*2) x 1200 = 3840 x 1200.

The third is the name of your device's output name. In the above, it is "Monitor-VGA-0", but it could be "Monitor-VGA0" or something. Look at the output of xrandr to see what name your graphics driver uses.

As with the XRandR configuration method, settings Virtual to a large value may result in a loss of hardware acceleration, and thus an inability to use Compiz and its desktop effects.

Enabling displayconfig-gtk (Xinerama only)

Ubuntu 7.10 and 8.04 provide this older X display configuration tool. Be aware that it can mess up your xorg.conf file, so if you use it be sure to back up your xorg.conf first!

It can either be run from the command line, or enabled in the menus via System > Preferences > Main Menu / Applications > Other and make sure the "Screens and Graphics" box is checked. It can then be found at Applications > Other > Screens and Graphics.

Setting up S-Video

Most drivers aren't able to correctly detect when stuff is attached to the S-Video port, so to avoid problems it's shipped off by default for most cases. There's several ways to enable it:

Option A. Turn load detection back on:

xrandr --output S-video --set load_detection 1

Option B. To turn load detection back on permanently in xorg.conf so it persists between reboots, add this to your xorg.conf:

# /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section "Device"
        ...
        Option "TVDACLoadDetect" "TRUE"
EndSection

Option C. Force S-Video on:

xrandr --addmode S-video 800x600

Input Configuration

Ubuntu 8.04 and later include a new version of Xorg which support input-hotplug. With this new functionality, it's likely that you won't need to do any configuration at all to make your devices work, assuming they're recognized and set up by the kernel. However, if you do need to do adjust things, read on.

Dynamic Input Configuration with xinput

The xinput command line tool can be used for some on-the-fly configuration adjustments. (Ubuntu 8.04 users will need to install xinput from 'universe'.)

To view a listing of the input devices X sees, run:

$ xinput list
...
"Configured Mouse"      id=2    [XExtensionPointer]
        Num_buttons is 9
        Num_axes is 2
        Mode is Relative
        Motion_buffer is 256
        Axis 0 :
                Min_value is -1
                Max_value is -1
                Resolution is 1
        Axis 1 :
                Min_value is -1
                Max_value is -1
                Resolution is 1
"Generic Keyboard"      id=3    [XExtensionKeyboard]
        Num_keys is 248
        Min_keycode is 8
        Max_keycode is 255

Individual devices can be queried for more details:

$ xinput query-state "Configured Mouse"
2 classes :
ButtonClass
        button[1]=up
        button[2]=up
        button[3]=up
        button[4]=up
        button[5]=up
        button[6]=up
        button[7]=up
        button[8]=up
        button[9]=up
ValuatorClass Mode=Relative Proximity=In
        valuator[0]=3182
        valuator[1]=969

If you have multiple mouse devices installed, you can switch which is considered the core pointer like this:

$ xinput set-pointer "Configured Mouse"

xinput can also be used to alter the button mappings on mice and adjust the acceleration and feedback settings.

In Ubuntu 8.10 and later, different input drivers may also expose arbitrary properties for applications to set. Synaptics touchpads are particularly configurable like this, but other devices have some more general properties.

$ xinput list-props "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"
Device 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad':
        Device Enabled:         1
        Synaptics Edges:                1632, 5312, 1575, 4281
        Synaptics Finger:               25, 30, 256
        Synaptics Tap Time:             180
        Synaptics Tap Move:             220
        Synaptics Tap Durations:                180, 180, 100
        Synaptics Tap FastTap:          0
[...]

$ xinput set-int-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "Device Enabled" 8 0
$ xinput list-props "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"
Device 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad':
        Device Enabled:         0
        Synaptics Edges:                1632, 5312, 1575, 4281
        Synaptics Finger:               25, 30, 256
        Synaptics Tap Time:             180
        Synaptics Tap Move:             220
        Synaptics Tap Durations:                180, 180, 100
        Synaptics Tap FastTap:          0
[...]

Input Configuration with HAL

Beginning with Ubuntu 8.10, input device configuration is done through HAL rather than in your xorg.conf. The syntax for HAL fdi files is a bit different than xorg.conf, and editing XML is only marginally better than editing xorg.conf... but on the plus side configuration changes don't require an X restart - just replugging of the device.

Essentially, to configure a device, add a new .fdi file for it into your /etc/hal/fdi/policy/ directory and then restart hal for it to take effect.

For example, use this sort of fdi file to set Synaptics touchpad options (see the synaptics manpage for possible options, or the Synaptics documentation for other methods):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
 <device>
  <match key="input.x11_driver" string="synaptics">
   <merge key="input.x11_options.VertTwoFingerScroll" type="string">true</merge>
   <merge key="input.x11_options.HorizTwoFingerScroll" type="string">true</merge>
  </match>
 </device>
</deviceinfo>

The match elements are used to conditionally match on various attributes related to the device or system. In this case we apply these settings to any device using the synaptics (ie. touchpad) driver. The append elements are used to add parameters to various options. Options previously put in xorg.conf can be set using input.x11_options.<option-name> (string).

Here is an example .fdi file for setting up keys on a Dell Precision M20:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer:system.hardware.product" prefix="Precision">
      <match key="/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer:system.hardware.product" contains="M20">
        <append key="input.keymap.data" type="strlist">e005:brightnessdown</append> <!-- Fn+Down arrow Brightness Down -->
        <append key="input.keymap.data" type="strlist">e006:brightnessup</append> <!-- Fn+Up arrow Brightness Up -->
        <append key="input.keymap.data" type="strlist">e007:battery</append> <!-- Fn+F3 battery icon -->
        <append key="input.keymap.data" type="strlist">e008:wlan</append> <!-- Fn+F2 Turn On/Off Wireless -->
        <append key="input.keymap.data" type="strlist">e009:ejectclosecd</append> <!-- Fn+F10 Eject CD -->
        <append key="input.keymap.data" type="strlist">e00a:suspend</append> <!-- Fn+F1 hibernate -->
        <append key="input.keymap.data" type="strlist">e00b:displaytoggle</append> <!-- Fn+F8 CRT/LCD -->
        <append key="info.capabilities" type="strlist">input.keymap</append>
      </match>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>

These match elements are used to match on the system's product name, to check that it starts with "Precision" and contains "M20". In this case, we're appending some [key]:[function] pairs to the input.keymap.data option.

As a contrived example, let's say you wanted to specify the dvorak-intl variant and configure the eurosign to the E key:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.keys">
      <merge key="input.xkb.variant" type="string">dvorak-intl</merge>
      <merge key="input.xkb.options" type="string">eurosign:e</merge>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>

An example of configuring for the Logitech MX1000 USB mouse:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
 <device>
  <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.mouse">
   <merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">mouse</merge>

    <!-- Logitech tweaks -->
    <match key="@input.originating_device:usb.vendor_id" int="0x46d">
     <match key="@input.originating_device:usb.product_id" int_outof="0xc50e;0xc518">
      <merge key="input.x11_options.RelHWHEELOptions" type="string">invert</merge>
     </match>
    </match>

   </match>
  </match>
 </device>
</deviceinfo>

The vendor_id and product_id values can be found via

$ cat /proc/bus/input/devices

Contributed Documentation

The following documentation was provided by various people in the past. Generally, much of it was written for pre-InputHotplug X, so may or may not still work in Intrepid.

Keyboard Config

Mouse Config

Tablet Config

Touchpad Config

Game Controller Config

References

X/Config (last edited 2020-10-13 09:10:05 by yktooo)