[openbox] Dual head + 1 monitor

Kacper Wysocki kacperw at online.no
Sat Aug 19 08:57:01 EDT 2006


Hi David,
I've been running two monitors in both Dual-head and Xinerama since
the openbox 2 days, and although I don't have a second screen anymore,
maybe I can shed some light on your issues.

On 8/19/06, David Courtney <blixel at gmail.com> wrote:
> The problem I'm now experiencing (finally getting to the point) is
> that windows on my primary 2 panels no longer behave properly.  By
> "properly", I mean when I maximize a window on either display, it now
> fills the screen on both displays.  When I move a window the edge of
> one screen, there is no resistance at the border.  It's as if the two
> primary panels now "think" that they are physically 1 screen.

TwinView supplies "pseudo-Xinerama" which are hints that openbox needs
to behave properly. These hints are probably disabled when the nvidia
driver detects the second screen. You may need to force enable the
hints with an nvidia driver option, or start using regular Xinerama
(caveat: last I heard there's no dri under Xinerama).
You need to take a good look at your /var/log/Xorg.0.log to find out
what the precise problem is.

> The "Left Wing" panel is behaving properly.  I have a 2nd instance of
> OpenBox running on that display (:0.1).  When I maximize a window, it
> only fills that screen.  When I move a window near any edge, it
> resists as it should.

Openbox 3 was designed with Xinerama in mind, but not dual-head.
Expect mouse focus, key grabbing and race or deadlock problems as the
two instances contend for the same resources. I had a lengthy
discussion with Ben Jansens about this, and he claimed that patching
openbox to support dual-head would require major work. Maybe it works
better without focus-follows-mouse.. YMMV. In any case, your present
issues are most likely due to the abovementioned Xinerama hints not
being present.

HTH,
  -Kacper Wysocki



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