External monitor does not work with radeon mobility M300

I should note that the bios was upgraded from A04 to A05 since it was last tested on dapper. If that's likely to have made the difference, i can boot off of a dapper live cd to test (don't have one available right now).

Please try with 7.10beta (livecd if you like), which has a much improved driver for output hotplugging.

This still does not work for me with the gutsy release candidate.

Does this occur on hardy? There's been a number of randr improvements to -ati since Gutsy. I've tested on several ATI cards and did not see this particular issue, although sometimes the list of available resolutions is limited.

If it does still occur, please attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log from right after attempting to connect the external monitor.

Yes, it still does. If I plug in the my external monitor, xrandr -q reports:
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1400 x 1063, maximum 1400 x 1200
VGA-0 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
   1280x1024 75.0 59.9
   1152x864 74.8
   1024x768 75.1 60.0
   800x600 75.0 60.3
   640x480 75.0 60.0
   720x400 70.1
DVI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
LVDS connected 1400x1050+0+13 (normal left inverted right x axis y
axis) 0mm x 0mm
   1400x1050 50.0*+
   1280x800 60.0
   1280x768 60.0
   1024x768 60.0
   800x600 60.3
   640x480 59.9
S-video disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

I can open System->Preferences->Screen Resolution and it seems to
detect my monitor. I can even pretend to configure it, but the
display never actually registers any signal. It simply stays dark.

Attached is my Xorg.0.log, as requested.

On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 4:03 AM, Bryce Harrington
<email address hidden> wrote:
> Does this occur on hardy? There's been a number of randr improvements
> to -ati since Gutsy. I've tested on several ATI cards and did not see
> this particular issue, although sometimes the list of available
> resolutions is limited.
>
> If it does still occur, please attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log from
> right after attempting to connect the external monitor.
>
> --
> External monitor does not work with radion mobility M300
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/78228
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

I had a similar experience by using the ATI drivers (fglrx).
I spent much time on trying to fix it and I finally found an ugly workaround.

$ aticonfig --query-monitor
>Connected monitors: crt1, lvds,
>Enabled monitors: lvds

The previous command returns the list of monitors connected to the notebook.
In my case, I wasn't able to display anything on the external monitor (crt1).
To fix it, I just execute the following command:

$ aticonfig --enable-monitor=lvds,crt1

This command seems to work as well

$ aticonfig --enable-monitor=auto

If you execute it as normal user, your xorg.conf will not be modified (no write access) but it activates the external monitor.

I forgot to mention that I have to change the resolution before executing the command.
If not, the beamer/monitor has a problem to display.

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. In the development cycle for Intrepid there have been some vast improvements in the open source ati video driver and we could use your help testing them. Could you please download the latest Alpha CD image of Intrepid and test this particular bug just using the Live CD? You can find the latest image at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing . Your testing can help make Ubuntu and the open source ati driver even better! Thanks in advance.

I've tested my laptop with Intreped Alpha 4 and have gotten much farther.

With the CD's default setup (using the radeon driver, I believe), xrandr detects my Dell external monitor. Further, using the Screen Resolution app I can activate the external monitor and mirror the two screens.

I'm not the original reporter, but the issue I added in comment 5 seems to be addressed.

I did encounter a new problem. I can't use the external screen in non-mirrored mode. When I try to deselect the Mirror Screens checkbox, nothing actually happens. If I close and then re-open the Screen Resolution app, it shows the screens as still mirrored. Perhaps I should log this as a new bug?

Thanks.

I'll mark this particular bug as Fixed Released but yes it would be quite useful if you were to submit a new bug regarding unchecking "Mirror Screens" not working. Thanks!

[Testing Intrepid ALPHA 5]

Unsing over a IBM ThinkPad T43, I have a lot of problems using the xorg-xserver-video-ati.

When use any GL Option (rendering) the system hangs.

rolando@defiant:~/reporting$ lshw -C display
WARNING: you should run this program as super-user.
  *-display UNCLAIMED
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: M22 [Mobility Radeon X300]
       vendor: ATI Technologies Inc
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
       version: 00
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: bus_master cap_list
       configuration: latency=0

may be, This sound very kreazy, freek or wire, but ...

If I use composite options without Network (Wireless unpluged) then all works, but If I connect my Wireless the XWindow Hangs.

I must to work without network OR without composite, and must to disable the screensaver too.

When is starting the compiz in a terminal, show...

---
Checking for Xgl: not present.
Detected PCI ID for VGA:
Checking for texture_from_pixmap: not present.
Trying again with indirect rendering:
Checking for texture_from_pixmap: present.
Checking for non power of two support: present.
Checking for Composite extension: present.
Comparing resolution (1024x768) to maximum 3D texture size (2048): Passed.
Checking for nVidia: not present.
Checking for FBConfig: present.
Checking for Xgl: not present.
Starting gtk-window-decorator
---

It took me a really long time to get back to this bug. That's the bad news. The good news is that I've tested with Intrepid beta and everything is working flawlessly. This has been one of my biggest annoyances since purchasing this laptop (~3 years ago), and while it's a PITA it took so long, everything works great now. I tried all combinations of screens, mirroring, resolutions, etc. and both the Screen Resolution applet and the resulting behavior on my monitors worked flawlessly. My one complaint is that resizing the virtual screen to handle dual monitors requires restarting the X server. Should I log a bug for that?

Anyway, thanks so much for the hard work.