Enabling second monitor causes crash.

There is any way to help test/troubleshoot this? Any idea about when the solution will land?

I've found that you can solve the problems caused by activating a second monitor by opening a virtual terminal CONTROL+ALT+F2, doing a $unity --replace and coming back to CONTROL+ALT+F7. This should give you a workable system.

There is a working solution to this in the forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=11363278&postcount=21

I can have both monitors working, but only after 2 or 3 attempts. My first 10-15 minutes of each lesson is to configure Ubuntu for dual monitors. Urh!

It freezes after changing nvidia configuration. But after some attempts, it finally applies the configuration. It takes some minutes between attempts.

If the configuration is always the same, there is no problem. But since I have to connect to a lot of different projectors, it is really annoying.

Ubuntu 11.10 (did not happen in previous version, maybe since 2006). It happens both with Unity and Gnome 3.

I find that saving my settings to Xorg.conf with the second monitor enabled
and rebooting tends to work every time. But you have to have the external
monitor/projector plugged in at boot to have it work. Perhaps if you can
get a projector working, then 'save to xorg.conf' you will be able to plug
in the projector and then boot your laptop and be able to save some
time.... Less than idea but perhaps better luck to you.

I find that Unity crashes much less frequently now when enabling my
external monitor, but it's always a scary operation, I've become accustom
to closing all of my applications before trying just in case, which is
quite annoying.... I for one can't wait for 12.04.... I don't want to go
back to 10.10 but it's looking better and better every day.

~Dereck

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and
falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.” -
Michelangelo

On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 8:30 PM, Jorge Gustavo <email address hidden> wrote:

> I can have both monitors working, but only after 2 or 3 attempts. My
> first 10-15 minutes of each lesson is to configure Ubuntu for dual
> monitors. Urh!
>
> It freezes after changing nvidia configuration. But after some attempts,
> it finally applies the configuration. It takes some minutes between
> attempts.
>
> If the configuration is always the same, there is no problem. But since
> I have to connect to a lot of different projectors, it is really
> annoying.
>
> Ubuntu 11.10 (did not happen in previous version, maybe since 2006). It
> happens both with Unity and Gnome 3.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/864784
>
> Title:
> Enableing second monitor causes crash.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/864784/+subscriptions
>

I can confirm this.

02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GT216 [GeForce GT 330M] (rev a2)

I noticed that, after applying the additional Monitor, the confirm dialog appearn on the second screen, but this screen mitght take longer than 15 seconds to warm up. Mostly i see this dialog at 1s. Hard to click "yes". but normaly this window has focus, so you can use the <leftarrow-key> to select yes, and if you see your screen seems to work you can press <enter>.

Often, when i miss that, i have to restart the displaymanager, because the mainscreen lasts black, or i can see my windows but miss windowmanger and unitybars.

-Sobo.

this appears in syslog, don't know what this means, but doesn't sounds normal?!

Dec 2 15:31:18 slappy gnome-session[8937]: WARNING: Application 'compiz.desktop' killed by signal
Dec 2 15:31:18 slappy gnome-session[8937]: WARNING: App 'compiz.desktop' respawning too quickly
Dec 2 15:31:18 slappy gnome-session[8937]: CRITICAL: We failed, but the fail whale is dead. Sorry....
Dec 2 15:31:49 slappy kernel: [ 8237.444091] compiz[10054]: segfault at 58 ip 00007f8a4c9c76d1 sp 00007fff33bf36e8 error 4 in libnvidia-glcore.so.280.13[7f8a4b919000+15f4000]
Dec 2 15:31:49 slappy gnome-session[8937]: WARNING: App 'compiz.desktop' respawning too quickly
Dec 2 15:31:49 slappy gnome-session[8937]: WARNING: Application 'compiz.desktop' killed by signal
Dec 2 15:31:49 slappy gnome-session[8937]: WARNING: App 'compiz.desktop' respawning too quickly

I have an Nvida 9600 GT with dual monitor setup. I have found that if I $ sudo nvidia-settings after 2 or 3 attempts it does what I am asking but I get the following errors in terminal:
shane@Aspire-8930:~$ sudo nvidia-settings
[sudo] password for shane:

WARNING: Unable to find CorePointer in X configuration; attempting to add new CorePointer section.
WARNING: The CorePointer device was not specified explicitly in the layout; using the first mouse device.
WARNING: Unable to find CoreKeyboard in X configuration; attempting to add new CoreKeyboard section.
WARNING: The CoreKeyboard device was not specified explicitly in the layout; using the first keyboard device.
WARNING: Unable to find CorePointer in X configuration; attempting to add new CorePointer section.
WARNING: The CorePointer device was not specified explicitly in the layout; using the first mouse device.
WARNING: Unable to find CoreKeyboard in X configuration; attempting to add new CoreKeyboard section.
WARNING: The CoreKeyboard device was not specified explicitly in the layout; using the first keyboard device.
python: can't open file '/usr/share/screen-resolution-extra/nvidia-polkit.py': [Errno 2] No such file or directory
ERROR: Unable to open X config file '/etc/X11/xorg.conf' for writing.

Why is this not working, It would be nice to just plug in a monitor/projector auto detect and apply settings without having to do this everytime.

PS running Ubuntu 12.04 Alpha release 1

Question:

Not sure if I am "affected" by this bug ... I am using a Lenovo W510 with nvidia graphics.
After upgrading to 11.10 I figured at some point, that I cant undock my laptop any more.
Earlier on, the laptop would simply switch to the internal display - but with unity/11.10 ...
the xserver (nvida driver) is crashing.

I followed the advice of a coworker - when running unity2D the problem isnt there;
I can (un)dock without any xserver crashes.

I found this bug entry here; saw it says "fixed"; so I added the ubuntu-desktop ppa
and upgraded to unity 4.28 - rebooted; but unfortunately xserver is still crashing upon undock.

Hello Dereck, or anyone else affected,

Accepted unity into oneiric-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

I tried unity-4.28 from oneiric-proposed on Dell Latitude with nvidia driver 280.13

Before update I was able to crash unity (not all the times, but easily)
I tried to crash unity 6 times after update but was not able to. I have seen a brief display distortion after first switch and then system recovered. The rest of the switches were without distortion.

This bug was fixed in the package unity - 4.28.0-0ubuntu2

---------------
unity (4.28.0-0ubuntu2) oneiric-proposed; urgency=low

  * Cherry-pick some additional fixes:
    - fix a regression where transparency is setup on the panel (LP: #830949)
    - the wrong commit causing a crash was revert. Revert the revert and
      revert the right guilty commit.

unity (4.28.0-0ubuntu1) oneiric-proposed; urgency=low

  * New upstream release.
    - don't segfault in geis_configuration_get_value() (lp: #850623)
    - get focus on dash by pressing the super key first time after login
      (lp: #860805)
    - clicking on panel when dash is open no longer causes maximized window
      to raise (lp: #873100)
    - window management, alt-tab - After using 'show desktop' to minimise all
      windows, opening any new window also incorrectly restores all
      the minimised windows (lp: #871801)
    - compiz crashed with SIGSEGV in
      unity::switcher::SwitcherModel::DetailSelectionWindow() (lp: #834630)
    - compiz crashed with SIGSEGV in g_strcmp0() (lp: #832151)
    - compiz crashed with SIGSEGV in nux::BaseWindow::GetInputWindowId()
      (when onboard is used) (lp: #865890)
    - fix multi-monitor crashers (lp: #838128, #864037, #864784, #868120)
    - Fix SIGSEGV after SwitcherController desctruction (lp: #887465)
    - Fix for "right-clicking launcher when choosing a workspace causes
      quicklists to freeze" (lp: #791810)
  * debian/patches/add_postrelease_buildfix.patch:
    - add post-release fix to build in a clean env
  * backport some additional reverts or regression fixes
 -- Didier Roche <email address hidden> Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:54:44 +0100