Comment 5 for bug 296223

I also see this very frequently for no apparent reason. There always appear two windows in very quick succession. The first is (incorrectly) reporting a new monitor connection event, and the second is (also incorrectly) reporting a disconnection event. The dialog is either "A new monitor output has been connected." or "A monitor output has been disconnected."

This is on a brand new installation of Kubuntu 8.10 on a Dell Latitude E5500. The frequency of the occurrences seems to have decreased after I did an update (of 85 packages that I didn't pay particularly close attention to) right after initial installation, but it still happens every 10-15 minutes. While I was waiting for it to happen just now to gather data for this comment, nothing happened for about five minutes, then six windows (three connections, three disconnections) popped up over the span of about four seconds.

When everything was sitting happily at idle, xrandr's output looks like this:
eangell@thorin:~$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1440 x 900, maximum 1440 x 1440
VGA disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
LVDS connected 1440x900+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 331mm x 207mm
   1440x900 59.9*+
   1360x768 59.8
   1152x864 60.0
   1024x768 60.0
   800x600 60.3
   640x480 59.9
HDMI-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
TV disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
eangell@thorin:~$

Once the crazy started happening, I managed to run xrandr a few times. Some were normal and some were a bit nuts (but all identical). The "connected" and "disconnected" dialogs appear so quickly (and steal focus, and seem to bog down the machine momentarily) that I'm not sure what the exact state was when I managed to obtain these samples. The "nuts" version looks like this:
eangell@thorin:~$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1440 x 900, maximum 1440 x 1440
VGA disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
LVDS connected 1440x900+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 331mm x 207mm
   1440x900 59.9*+
   1360x768 59.8
   1152x864 60.0
   1024x768 60.0
   800x600 60.3
   640x480 59.9
HDMI-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
TV disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
  1024x768 (0xa7) 26.9MHz
        h: width 1024 start 1025 end 1088 total 1120 skew 0 clock 24.0KHz
        v: height 768 start 769 end 800 total 801 clock 30.0Hz
  800x600 (0xa8) 17.0MHz
        h: width 800 start 801 end 864 total 896 skew 0 clock 19.0KHz
        v: height 600 start 601 end 632 total 633 clock 30.0Hz
  848x480 (0xa9) 14.5MHz
        h: width 848 start 849 end 912 total 944 skew 0 clock 15.4KHz
        v: height 480 start 481 end 512 total 513 clock 30.0Hz
  640x480 (0xaa) 11.3MHz
        h: width 640 start 641 end 704 total 736 skew 0 clock 15.4KHz
        v: height 480 start 481 end 512 total 513 clock 30.0Hz
eangell@thorin:~$

How does it make any sense to provide a list of allowed configuration settings for the TV output when it's listed as disconnected? I do have an s-video port on the side of the laptop (although I've never tried to use it), and presumably that's the physical side of the "TV" output.

I have not tried checking the "Do not ask again" box because I want to know while this bug still exists, and I will probably want to use the feature as I plan to dock and undock a lot, using an external monitor (although as yet this laptop has never been connected to its dock).

This system has Intel graphics. From lspci -vv:
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
 Subsystem: Dell Device 0263
 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
 Latency: 0
 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16
 Region 0: Memory at f6c00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
 Region 2: Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
 Region 4: I/O ports at efe8 [size=8]
 Capabilities: [90] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable-
  Address: 00000000 Data: 0000
 Capabilities: [d0] Power Management version 3
  Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
  Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-

00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
 Subsystem: Dell Device 0263
 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
 Latency: 0
 Region 0: Memory at f6b00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1M]
 Capabilities: [d0] Power Management version 3
  Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
  Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-

I don't yet understand how all the Xorg configuration happens in 8.10. My /etc/X11/xorg.conf is pretty barren, but searching in /var/log/Xorg.0.log shows that it's loading the "intel" module, and that in turn is detecting a "Mobile Intel GM45 Express Chipset", all of which makes sense.

Hmm. I did a reboot to ask the BIOS about the video card (it agrees, Intel GM45), and now the dialog isn't occurring anymore. But I do see Xorg.0.log growing periodically for no apparent reason. It looks like it's repeating the same lines over and over:
(II) intel(0): EDID vendor "SEC", prod id 21570
(II) intel(0): Printing DDC gathered Modelines:
(II) intel(0): Modeline "1440x900"x0.0 108.00 1440 1504 1536 1976 900 903 906 912 +hsync -vsync (54.7 kHz)
(II) intel(0): Modeline "1440x900"x0.0 108.00 1440 1504 1536 1976 900 903 906 912 +hsync -vsync (54.7 kHz)
(II) intel(0): EDID vendor "SEC", prod id 21570

But those lines look like they relate to LVDS (1440x900), not TV.

So that's all I've thought of to offer for now. Let me know if you'd like more info. Hopefully the problem is reproducible at that time.