F17 Dell E6420 Dual DVI Monitors not working

[squoggle]

New Dell E6420 Laptop with Docking station and dual monitors.

My docking station has 1 vga port and 2 DVI ports. Fedora 17 does not see the two DVI ports is only sees the VGA port which seems to work fine.

How do I get Fedora to recgonize the two DVI ports?

Info on what I have checked:

Checked the video displays:

$ xrandr 
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192
LVDS1 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
   1600x900       60.0 +   40.1  
   1024x768       60.0  
   800x600        60.3     56.2  
   640x480        59.9  
VGA1 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 509mm x 286mm
   1920x1080      60.0*+
   1600x1200      60.0  
   1680x1050      60.0  
   1400x1050      60.0  
   1280x1024      75.0     60.0  
   1440x900       59.9  
   1280x960       60.0  
   1152x864       75.0  
   1024x768       75.1     70.1     60.0  
   832x624        74.6  
   800x600        72.2     75.0     60.3     56.2  
   640x480        72.8     75.0     66.7     60.0  
   720x400        70.1

Checked video cards:

$ lspci -v | grep VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GF108 [Quadro NVS 4200M] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

The above is actually kind of curious as to why two video cards show up. It's a laptop, why would it have two?

Checked which driver is loading:

$ tail -30 /var/log/Xorg.0.log
[ 18165.901] (II) intel(0): EDID vendor "HSP", prod id 5832
[ 18165.901] (II) intel(0): Using hsync ranges from config file
[ 18165.901] (II) intel(0): Using vrefresh ranges from config file
[ 18165.901] (II) intel(0): Printing DDC gathered Modelines:
[ 18165.901] (II) intel(0): Modeline "1920x1080"x0.0  148.50  1920 2008 2052 2200  1080 1084 1089 1125 +hsync +vsync (67.5 kHz eP)
[ 18165.901] (II) intel(0): Modeline "800x600"x0.0   40.00  800 840 968 1056  600 601 605 628 +hsync +vsync (37.9 kHz e)
----snip----

Looks like it is loading the intel

So the question is, how do I get Fedora 17 to use the two DVI ports on the docking station instead of just the VGA port on the dock?

Also this is annoying but not critical:

I'm having to start the laptop with the monitor open in order to see the login screen. Once I log in as my user I have the system settings to turn off the laptop monitor and only use the external VGA. I would prefer to start the system closed and get the login on the external monitor.

Also I can never close the laptop monitor all the way, If I do it goes to sleep or whatever. How do I get that to not go to sleep. I can't find any settings for that.

Oh, running both Gnome 3 and KDE. KDE seems to have better settings in system settings but nothing seems to solve the issues I have described.

Thanks

[Tertsi]

Hi

I have excatly same problem (Fedora 17, Dell E6420 and docking station), I cannot get DVI ports to work in my docking station. VGA works fine.

Does anyone know solution for this problem?

Best,
Tertsi

[squoggle]

I've done extensive research on this on the web and not found much. Dell support web site only talks about Windblows

[Tertsi]

I did search web too and bugzilla, but I didn't found anything...

I just did a bug report about it:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=835789

---------- Post added at 10:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:49 AM ----------

I got DVI working! Ben Skeggs from RedHat told me to disable Optimus from the BIOS setup, and I did, and now Dual DVI works great!

[mikee]

I have an E6410 with an NV50 generation card and similar issues.
I ended up dumping nouveau and installing the nvidia driver to get it to work.
Not sure if this is the same though.

[squoggle]

Yes, that works for me mostly. However now the right screen does not show multiple virtual desktops. Just the left screen. When I switch desktop screens on left the right always remains the same.

[mikee]

Originally Posted by squoggle

Yes, that works for me mostly. However now the right screen does not show multiple virtual desktops. Just the left screen. When I switch desktop screens on left the right always remains the same.

Yeah, that's what I have for now. It is a functional setup for me since I normally put stuff
there that is "sticky" to the workspace.

It should be possible to fix in /etc/X11/xorg.conf by manually editing the file.
I have not gotten that far yet.