Single or Dual head for laptop, Xwrapper ?

[Reinhard Tartler]

Good morning, folks.

On 5/16/05, Daniel Stone <daniel at fooishbar.org> wrote:
> On Sun, May 15, 2005 at 08:06:46PM -0700, Karl Hegbloom wrote:
> > On Mon, 2005-05-16 at 12:54 +1000, Daniel Stone wrote:
> > > On Sun, May 15, 2005 at 04:45:14PM -0700, Karl Hegbloom wrote:
> > > > Had and idea... what if at boot, you use 'e' to edit the boot command,
> > > > and add 'X11Layout=projector1024x768' or some such, and that made the
> > > > Xwrapper launch the X server use a '-layout' configuration that
> > > > includes a projector screen on the VGA port?
> > >
> > > This is stunningly out of the scope of Xwrapper, and far out of the
> > > scope of gdm and friends.  What you're really asking here is for hotplug
> > > device support and automatic configuration in X, which is so far out of
> > > bountyville that it's not funny.  It'll happen, eventually.
> >
> > Please explain why it is "out of the scope" of Xwrapper, so that I do
> > not make that mistake in the future.

I think I've done what Karl instead wanted. Karl, let me propose this:
Replace in /etc/gdm/gdm.conf the line command with this:
command=/usr/local/bin/X-wrapper -br -audit 0

Now place a shellscript in /usr/local/bin/X-wrapper. Mine looks like this:
#!/bin/sh

LAYOUT=`cat /home/siretart/.layout`
echo $(date) starting X with layout $LAYOUT >> /tmp/X-wrapper.log

if [ -z $LAYOUT]; then
        exec /usr/X11R6/bin/X $*
else
        exec /usr/X11R6/bin/X -layout "$LAYOUT" $*
fi

Well, it isn't terribly sophisticated at the moment, but It should
show you the idea. The X-wrapper shell script is some sort of
dispatcher, which chooses the right -layout parameter. For what you
want to do, you would need to implement some sort of magic auto
detection what layout is desired by the user. For me, I was fine with
placing a file in my home directory. With some graphical front end
capable of parsing /etc/X11/xorg.conf for available ServerLayouts,
this could be one a feasible improvement for a larger audience.

Surely, it would be neat if hotplug and/or other auto detection would
be able to detect your current Location, and then select your layout
accordingly. But I'm not aware of any location manager which would
register, detect and handle location.

> In that case, if all you want is -layout, then you want to be making
> changes to gdm.

Or editing gdm.conf the way I described above.



-- 
regards,
    Reinhard