Hi, I’m a Linux newbie although programmer since the early 80s and a brief flirtation with Red Hat in the late 90s.
I have a HP Pavilion dv6 laptop. Old but all working ok in Win10. I write software now and again (web app for business use) and use a second (cheap) monitor (17 inch, VGA connection) to help.
With Fedora Workstation (v43) I am frequently getting a pop up to change the monitor organisation. The pop up has 4 options, Mirror, Joined Displays, External Only, Built In Only. It comes up everytime I open an app/window (eg calculator). It randomly selects one of the options and, unless I quickly position the mouse cursor on the one I want, I lose my choice and the setup changes. Just as I finished the last sentence it popped up and my screen is now narrower (second monitor off but still connected).
My observations.
The popup comes up before the app/window opens.
It sometimes happens randomly.
It is less common when I have the second monitor switched off.
It rarely happens when the second monitor is disconnected.
It was even worse when I tried to use the TV (hdmi) as a second screen.
Display settings can be used to put it all back correct (and confirmed) then seconds or minutes later its chase the pop up option again.
I appear to be using the Wayland driver. Graphics is AMD. I haven’t installed any special drivers. Display quality is fine on built in (1366x768) and second monitor (1024x768).
I had this problem right from the beginning after a new clean install of Fedora. No Gnome extensions installed. So far I’ve installed Apache2, Maria DB, phpMyAdmin.
I have just tried creating a new admin user and logging out and back in as the new user and, after connecting the external monitor, the problem is the same.
I took away the admin privileges, logged out and back in and still the same problem.
I gave up on Fedora 43 Workstation. The dual screen issue (above) was occuring too frequently.
I performed a fresh install of F43 KDE Plasma Desktop which appears to be a nicer and more friendly looking system.
Unfortunately the dual screen problem is still there but a bit more manageable (tolerable). Now I get a wider screen organisation prompt (toolbar, popup?) irregularly (about every 10 to 15 minutes) but also when I open certain apps.
It has the rightmost icon auto selected which is “Leave Unchanged” and it waits until I move the mouse over it and click to select. This is much better than the similar pop up under F43 Workstation which took a random selection and then disappeared within a few seconds.
I have experimented with opening a few apps and I can’t see the differences between those that trigger and those that don’t.
Firefox and Chromium both trigger the pop up just before their screens load.
Other apps that I have tested including Kwrite, Dolphin, Libra Office, Konsole, Discover and System Settings don’t trigger the prompt. I suppose that the issue may be down to a specific library.
I feel that there are three things happening.
There is a hardware issue where a flag is being set to indicate a change in display
There is a software issue where this flag is being checked just before the app window is drawn.
The pop up is being called.
It’s a long time since I did any system programming (writing TSRs on MSDos and hardware interfacing with assembler) but I am sure that there must be the opportunity to intervene between steps 1 and 2 and between 2 and 3.
Thanks for that, sorry for delay in response. Output supplied below. All starts to happen at line number 27 when I open Chromium. It repeats again when I open Firefox at line 66.
Using the service message at line 42 (Starting plasma-kcsreen-osd.service) I located a solution that I have now applied and it seems to work.
Dec 09 12:04:09 polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1[2648]: qrc:/qml/QuickAuthDialog.qml:57:5: QML Shortcut: Shortcut: Only binding to one of multiple key bindings associated with 70. Use ‘sequences: [ ]’ to bind to all of them.
Dec 09 12:04:09 audit: BPF prog-id=161 op=LOAD
Dec 09 12:04:09 systemd[1]: Starting fprintd.service - Fingerprint Authentication Daemon…
Dec 09 12:04:13 kio-admin-helper[5748]: QStandardPaths: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set, defaulting to ‘/tmp/runtime-root’
Dec 09 12:04:13 kio-admin-helper[5748]: QStandardPaths: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set, defaulting to ‘/tmp/runtime-root’
Dec 09 12:04:13 kio-admin-helper[5748]: QStandardPaths: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set, defaulting to ‘/tmp/runtime-root’
Dec 09 12:04:13 kio-admin-helper[5748]: QStandardPaths: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set, defaulting to ‘/tmp/runtime-root’
Dec 09 12:04:13 kio-admin-helper[5748]: QStandardPaths: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set, defaulting to ‘/tmp/runtime-root’
Dec 09 12:04:17 polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1[2648]: qrc:/qml/QuickAuthDialog.qml:57:5: QML Shortcut: Shortcut: Only binding to one of multiple key bindings associated with 70. Use ‘sequences: [ ]’ to bind to all of them.
Dec 09 12:04:21 xdg-desktop-portal-kde[2650]: Socket not connected QLocalSocket::PeerClosedError
Dec 09 12:04:23 systemd[1987]: Started app-org.kde.kwrite@2d0798f1f6da49ce99d451503f451a43.service - KWrite - Text Editor.
Dec 09 12:04:24 polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1[2648]: qrc:/qml/QuickAuthDialog.qml:57:5: QML Shortcut: Shortcut: Only binding to one of multiple key bindings associated with 70. Use ‘sequences: [ ]’ to bind to all of them.
Dec 09 12:06:55 systemd[1987]: Started app-org.chromium.Chromium-13985.scope.
Dec 09 12:06:55 plasmashell[2584]: error creating screencast “Could not find window id {b61bb921-394a-4597-9b4f-10e4f5c4e12e}”
Dec 09 12:06:55 chromium-browser[13993]: [14065:14065:1209/120655.399441:ERROR:ui/gl/egl_util.cc:92] EGL Driver message (Error) eglCreateContext: Requested version is not supported
Dec 09 12:06:55 chromium-browser[13993]: libva error: /usr/lib64/dri/iHD_drv_video.so init failed
Dec 09 12:06:55 chromium-browser[13993]: [14065:14065:1209/120655.409640:ERROR:media/gpu/vaapi/vaapi_wrapper.cc:1628] vaInitialize failed: unknown libva error
Dec 09 12:06:55 chromium-browser[13993]: [14065:14065:1209/120655.410038:ERROR:ui/gl/egl_util.cc:92] EGL Driver message (Error) eglCreateContext: Requested version is not supported
Dec 09 12:06:55 chromium-browser[13993]: [14065:14065:1209/120655.416843:ERROR:ui/gl/egl_util.cc:92] EGL Driver message (Error) eglCreateContext: Requested version is not supported
Dec 09 12:06:55 chromium-browser[13993]: [14065:14065:1209/120655.455717:ERROR:ui/gl/egl_util.cc:92] EGL Driver message (Error) eglCreateContext: Requested version is not supported
Dec 09 12:06:57 systemd[1987]: plasma-kscreen-osd.service: Consumed 1.260s CPU time, 61.4M memory peak.
Dec 09 12:06:59 chromium-browser[13993]: [13985:14030:1209/120659.899652:ERROR:google_apis/gcm/engine/registration_request.cc:292] Registration response error message: DEPRECATED_ENDPOINT
Dec 09 12:07:07 systemd[1987]: app-org.chromium.Chromium-13985.scope: Consumed 2.656s CPU time, 45.7M memory peak.
Dec 09 12:07:07 systemd[1987]: app-chromium\x2dbrowser@1ad9ce82210948cca175eb2eb513fc59.service: Consumed 6.687s CPU time, 273.4M memory peak.
Dec 09 12:07:11 systemd[1987]: Started app-org.mozilla.firefox@bcc62dedfa2c4d06889223fa1d9d4433.service - Firefox - Web Browser.
Dec 09 12:07:11 firefox[14225]: restorecon: SELinux: Could not get canonical path for /home/kclear/.mozilla/firefox//gmp-widevinecdm/ restorecon: No such file or directory.
Dec 09 12:07:12 audit: BPF prog-id=162 op=LOAD
Dec 09 12:07:12 audit: BPF prog-id=163 op=LOAD
Dec 09 12:07:12 audit: BPF prog-id=164 op=LOAD
Dec 09 12:07:12 systemd[1]: Starting systemd-timedated.service - Time & Date Service…
Dec 09 12:07:12 systemd[1987]: Started app-org.kde.kscreen@647ae3d25e0a4fcd94a9d859d07e990f.service - Display Configuration.