SOLVED Window manager not running on second head

[Bill Moseley]

On Fri, Nov 02, 2007 at 05:36:59PM -0700, Bill Moseley wrote:
> On my Thinkpad with ATI FireGl with Feisty I could plugin in a second
> monitor and restart xorg and the second screen would start with the
> same desktop as the primary and I could move the mouse between the
> screens.
> 
> With Gutsy, and with and without Compiz, the second display starts,
> but it's a *black scree* with no WM running on it.  I can move the mouse
> onto the screen but it's just the "X" mouse.

This appears to be a problem related to XGL.

I disabled xgl by creating a "disable" file:

    $ ls .config/xserver-xgl/
    disable

And now the window manager displays on the second head.

There is a newer version of the ATI driver available that doesn't use
XGL.  It's possible this would fix this problem, but I did not try.
(There are some reports of problems with the newer ATI driver, so
I'll stick with the one in Gutsy for now).

-- 
Bill Moseley
moseley at hank.org