Do you use Linux!? Can you help? For the love of all that is Holy

Smoker's Lounge
41

If you don’t wanna read my notes below the first break, I have a couple questions:
Note that I had planned on doing a fresh install of linux mint after solving this lid closed behavior problem, for a couple reasons.

  1. It seems that the issue was with the UPower service, and needing to force it to “ignore the lid being closed”…? But seeing as I’d followed all the other methods/settings in increasing order to try and solve the problem, and they didn’t solve it, I now don’t really know what all of those settings are actually doing now. I’d like to only have settings changed that need to be changed. I changed settings in the GUI, in systemd, and in dconf. Those are what I remember. Is it possible I only actually needed the setting(s) in UPower.conf and, say, one other thing? Eg: Once the Upower.conf setting is done, then the settings in the GUI would do what I need? Or the GUI settings and systemd? Or systemd and dconf? Etc. Know what I mean?

  2. I have some screenshots of the Display prefs that I’d like some thoughts on. I took them yesterday, before fixing the issue. I’ll post them here when I get a minute.

  3. I think if I were using linux mint, with the laptop lid closed, as I am right now, and then I were to restart it, that it wouldn’t actually start up (or start all the way up) and get to the point where the login screen would be displayed on the external monitor. For a couple reasons maybe.
    a) The system/sdd is encrypted (twice?). When I installed linux mint, I remember options to encrypt two things (maybe the system and the home folder, or something).
    b) Maybe something to do with peripherals? It doesn’t seem like linux connects with logitech mx keys mini keyboard until I’m fully logged in and I press a key on it. It’s connected via bluetooth I think (plain bluetooth - not the unified adapter nor logibolt adapter). The mouse, a logitech mx vertical mouse, is connected via the unified adapter (I checked, and when I remove the adapter, the mouse looses connection).
    c) Oh, right - and the third thing is that the boot sequence has the other drive, with windows on it, above the “Ubuntu”/linux mint" drive.
    I remember now, I actually tried last night, while in linux mint with lid closed, to open the lid enough to be able to reach the F12 key, then clicked restart, then pressed F12 upon restart, then chose the “Ubuntu/LM” drive, then I closed the lid again, to see if it’d display any login or decrypt/login screen on the external monitor. It did not. I had to open the the lid again (and I don’t remember actually if this was before or after the “decrypt” login screen that I closed the lid back down (after selecting to boot from “Ubuntu/LM” drive) ).

A note on my brief xrandr attempt is down below. Don’t know what it might have done, if anything.

-I’m becomming addicted to using the ai-gorythms.

From my “Notes”;

Here’s what I’d done previously, around Aug/17, when I tried xrandr:

-I’m asking grok and gemini for answers.
-I’m using this command xrandr --output --primary --auto
-I find the external monitor name using command xrandr. It’s "DP-1-1.
-I insert “DP-1-1” in place of and hit enter.
-The external monitor goes blank/black. Fail.
-I think. I disconnect the video cable (dp adapter), and the plug it in. The external monitor turns on again.
-I don’t know what I just did now. It’s late. So after I check BIOS for something to do with power options or something, as ai suggested, I’m done for the night.

Notes from last night, leading up to “success”:

-I noticed some forum members and info using the term " upowerd.conf " or " .config " (I think), While others used the term " upower.conf " or " config ". Ie: some had a “d” in the term. Also, I think some had a lower case “u”, while some had an upper case “U”. So, I asked grok what’s the difference between " upowerd.conf and upower.conf, and I think the answer is basically that former refers to the “daemon”, and the latter refers to the “command line tool”.

Anyways, what I did last night that seemed to “fix” the problem is this:

-Following @funkyfunk’s post, I used his command gedit /etc/UPower/UPower.conf. I wasn’t sure it’d work because grok gave a slightly different command (something in there about directing to a folder, or root, or something, to avoid potential issues) but I just went with funk. I pasted the command, entered password and opened the file in gedit. I changed the " =false " to " =true ". I saved the file. I closed gedit.
-I then tried to use a terminal command that is supposed to “restart the systemd services” or something. After that I tested closing the lid. The external monitor turned off. (Maybe there’s a command to restart… UPowerd service or something, I duno?)
-I decided to restart the laptop. After logging in, and at the desktop, I tried closing the laptop lid and the external monitor stayed on. Finally.

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42

Just a note, for myself, for later:

I just noticed that my mouse cursor can still “exit” the external monitors boundary in the same area of the screen and toward the same direction as it could/did when the lid is open and the external monitor is used as an “extended” configuration. This isn’t ideal because the curson can get lost or disappear of the screen now.

-Does this suggest that the closed lid laptop’s screen is still on? (I actually tried to check the other night by very minimally opening the closed lid to check for any light coming through, but maybe this wouldn’t indicate if it was or not).
-What does this indicate, and how could I resolve it? I want the external monitor to act as though it’s the only monitor when the laptop lid is closed.

1 Like
43

sounds like you’re asking too much from it maybe. good luck with it. as a workaround there is a gadget called eyes you can put on the taskbar that looks in the direction of the mouse so you can find it. used to be able to drag it anywhere on the desktop but that was over a decade ago. my son loved it when he got his firs opensuse laptop at age 7.

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44

It means the screen is still part of your desktop display. You can disable it as a display device with xrandr.

Probably with something like:

xrandr --output DP-1-1 --primary --auto --output [name of laptop display] --off

It could take some fidgeting.

Does this mean you need to enter a password at boot time to decrypt your hard drives?

Grub has very limited support for display settings in terms of multi-monitor.

This is one of those settings that would be controlled by the BIOS.

Once you’ve picked your selection at the bootloader control will be handed over to the operating system.

1 Like
45

it’s not in the bios, you can change the grub menu and make say whatever you want. i forgot the exact path to the file but i think it’s /etc/default/grub or somewhere in /etc. i used to run mint exclusively on my desktop but it got replaced by debian while i’m working on a project or i’d just go turn it on and look at it.

edit: i used to have two options at boot time: (all lowercase) linux and winblows.