Initial RandR set-up

[Warren Block]

On Mon, 9 Feb 2009, Kevin Oberman wrote:

> In these days of xrandr, is there a good, standard way to do the initial
> set-up of the display? I currently have a script to do "xrandr --output
> VGA2 --right-of VGA1" and, in one case, set the resolution of the second
> display. I'd like to know the best way to kick this off as early as
> possible in the startup of X.

IMO it's better to set positions and resolutions in xorg.conf directly. 
That way it's all in one place.  Here's an example:

Section "Monitor"
         Identifier   "Monitor0"
         VendorName   "HWP"
         ModelName    "2615"
         Option       "PreferredMode" "1920x1200"
         Option       "Position" "1024 0"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
         Identifier   "Monitor1"
         VendorName   "PHL"
         ModelName    "Philips 150B3"
         Option       "PreferredMode" "1024x768"
         Option       "Position" "0 0"
EndSection

The Position option determines where the monitor is positioned on the 
virtual screen.  I also manually assign the monitors to outputs on the 
video card:

Section "Device"
         Driver      "radeon"
         VendorName  "ATI Technologies Inc"
         BoardName   "Radeon X1650 Pro"
         BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
         Option      "AccelMethod" "EXA"
         # WB: prevent flickering pointer
         Option      "SWcursor" "True"
         Option      "Monitor-DVI-0" "Monitor0"
         Option      "Monitor-DVI-1" "Monitor1"
EndSection

xrandr shows the correct names of the outputs for those last two lines.

The Screen section is simple:

Section "Screen"
         Identifier "Screen0"
         Device     "Card0"
         Monitor    "Monitor0"
         SubSection "Display"
                 Virtual 2944 1200
         EndSubSection
EndSection

Since my monitors are side by side, the Virtual size is just the sum of 
the monitor widths, and the height is the larger of the two.

-Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA