Fedora 11 + Lenovo T500 + Avocent Switchview (Part 2)

I had earlier posted some problems with my attempts to get a second monitor working through my Avocent and the work Lenovo T500 (thankyou Red Hat.. its a nice machine). I have not been able to get it to work automatically, but I have had success with the uberpowerful xrandr

Steps to do this if you run into this problem:

1) Attach the monitor directly to your laptop and get it working through there. If the monitor is new enough and good enough you should have gotten a good DCC reading from the monitor. Look for it in the /var/log/Xorg.log files:

(II) intel(0): Serial No: T61164BSBD2Z
(II) intel(0): Monitor name: DELL 1905FP
(II) intel(0): Ranges: V min: 56 V max: 76 Hz, H min: 30 H max: 81 kHz, PixClock max 140 MHz
(II) intel(0): EDID (in hex):
(II) intel(0):  00ffffffffffff0010ac0c405a324442
(II) intel(0):  310e01030e261f78ee1145a45a4aa024
(II) intel(0):  145054a54b00714f8180010101010101
(II) intel(0):  010101010101302a009851002a403070
(II) intel(0):  1300782d1100001e000000ff00543631
(II) intel(0):  31363442534244325a0a000000fc0044
(II) intel(0):  454c4c203139303546500a20000000fd
(II) intel(0):  00384c1e510e000a202020202020004b
(II) intel(0): EDID vendor "DEL", prod id 16396
(II) intel(0): Using EDID range info for horizontal sync
(II) intel(0): Using EDID range info for vertical refresh
(II) intel(0): Printing DDC gathered Modelines:
(II) intel(0): Modeline "1280x1024"x0.0  108.00  1280 1328 1440 1688  1024 1025 1028 1066 +hsync +vsync (64.0 kHz)

Then you can hook up the monitor back through the switchview and bring the system up again. Now we use the xrandr command.

xrandr -q
[root@localhost log]# xrandr -v -q
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1680 x 1050, maximum 8192 x 8192
VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
LVDS1 connected 1680x1050+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 331mm x 207mm
   1680x1050      60.0*+   50.0  
DVI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

[root@localhost log]# xrandr --newmode "1280x1024"x0.0  108.00  1280 1328 1440 1688  1024 1025 1028 1066 +hsync +vsync
[root@localhost log]# xrandr --addmode VGA1 "1280x1024"x0.0
[root@localhost log]# xrandr --output VGA1 --mode "1280x1024"x0.0 --right-of LVDS1

And after a bit of flickering your second monitor will show up. Now its not a perfect match yet... doing another xrandr -v -q gives us

[ssmoogen@localhost ~]$ xrandr -q -v
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 2960 x 1050, maximum 8192 x 8192
VGA1 disconnected 1280x1024+1680+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm
   1280x1024x0.0   60.0* 
LVDS1 connected 1680x1050+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 331mm x 207mm
   1680x1050      60.0*+   50.0  
DVI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

With the monitor being listed as disconnected X windows acts a little funny. You can move applications over it (so I have xchat working there while I switch other desktops.. ) but hitting the menus button the menu will show up in the wrong window.

Will try to figure that out later... but at the moment I can work on my 3 systems much easier now.