Created attachment 6580 Screenshot from display-settings panel when all 3 displays are working correctly. Unfortunately display settings doesn't switch on display 3 voluntary and even switches off display 1. Getting all three switched on is quite often a longish juggeling act restarting the whole x-server and clicking on "Use this display" over and over. Sometimes the screen then gets switched on for 2-3 seconds and then immediately off again just to repeat the whole mess. Interestingly enough though, the Display-Lockmanager lightdm never has any problems and starts on all three displays. Only once the xfce desktop itself starts after the login, the display or displays get switched off again and must painstakingly switched on again by the above process. Sometimes it is enough (luckly most often in the 2 display setup where display 1 is missing) just to lock the screens and to log in again (a few times) to get all displays working properly. Once all three displays are switched on successfully I run the xrandr command below which then in turn messes up the display-settings display since it can't handle scaled displays, as visible from the attached screenshot (but that is only a trivial issue compared to the main problem) xrandr --output VGA-0 --off --output DP-5 --off --output DP-6 --mode 3840x2160 --pos 6080x0 --rotate normal --output DP-4 --mode 3200x1800 --pos 0x0 --rotate normal --output DP-3 --scale 1.5x1.5 --mode 1920x1200 --pos 3200x0 --rotate normal --output DP-2 --off --output DP-1 --off --output DP-0 --off The three displays are -left to right- a 15,6" laptop display, a 24" FullHD display (scaled 1.5x1.5) <- This is missing in the 2 display setup and a 28" UHD display
I have a similar problem that may explain this. I use a sequence of `xrandr` commands in my `.Xclients` file before `startxfce4` (I don't use a display manager) and the 3 displays (two video cards) are fine initially. I've also used an xorg.conf which correctly configures things for some window managers but currently I don't use it with the xfce session (it did not help), although I do use it with fvwm2, which is running concurrently, and started first, under a different VT, user, and Xorg instance; I frequently switch from one VT to the other and this is not a problem (in fact, I started using XFCE when KDE stopped being able to deal with this following an "upgrade", and I'm happy about that as XFCE has turned out to be more up my alley). Anyway, as mentioned, while I'm actively using the system this is not a problem. However, if I step away for a few minutes and leave XFCE up front, it loses the primary (center) display. Fortunately, as long as at least one screen works it is always possible to get to the settings manager back and fix this, however, this is obviously a bit of a hassle. It is made much more of a hassle because, as I think is implicit in the irritating symptoms described by Micheal Neuffer, the Display Settings GUI interface has a number of problems; I am filing a separate report about this and will leave a link here. Note that: - I have disabled the XFCE screensaver. - The primary monitor does use a motion/proximity sensor for power saving, but disabling this make no difference, i.e., it is not because the monitor switches into a power saving mode.
Okay, as promised: bug 12658 I think this is mostly the same problem, although I've focused there on the behaviour of the Display Settings interface and not the spontaneous elimination of displays. I think the latter is a harder problem to solve, whereas the former may largely explain Micheal Neuffer's issues and should be easier to fix since it would seem to be about a GUI interface with serious design flaws/lack of testing.
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