Connect laptop to a projector in Solaris
Recently, I was asked to do a demo about Sun Device Detection Tool on Sun Techday Beijing. I remember it used to be difficult to connect a laptop running Solaris OS to a projector properly. So I prepared 2 laptops, borrowed 1 projector to do the rehearsal in the office. After some experiments, I found it's actually quite easy to do that with latest release of Solaris.
I have Solaris Express Developer Edition 9/07 installed on both laptops. Here are steps needed to show contents on both laptop LCD and the projector:
* For Thinkpad X60, in the BIOS, change the setting of 'config->video' from 'LCD' to 'Both'. Then start Solaris as normal and login . Next, connect the laptop with the projector, log out and log in again, you should be able to see the contents on both LCD and projector. An alternative way is to press 'Ctrl+Alt+BackSpace', it restarts the Xorg server, automatically log out and prompt for login.
* For Dell D610, just logout and login is enough. No BIOS change needed. Later, I tested a Dell Latitude X1, that laptop behaves the same as this D610.
Earlier release of Solaris OS, such as Solaris Express Developer 5/07, doesn't work well on the Thinkpad X60 with scenarios described above. Xserver complains something like 'no enough memmory' and wouldn't come up.
in indiana at least you dont need to restart X, you can use xrandr
Posted by nacho on November 10, 2007 at 12:59 AM CST #
hi Frank, so nice to see you blogging! And thanks for this entry, I'll use it as a reference for the future. I always get nervous when I have to project on-screen from a Solaris laptop because as you said, until recently it was usually difficult.
Posted by melanie gao on November 10, 2007 at 07:04 AM CST #
I just tested xrandr in SXCE 76 on a Dell Latitude X1 laptop, it worked. It's really cool, I can even rotate the screen. To show the contents on both LCD and VGA, just run '/usr/X11/bin/xrandr --auto' in a terminal window is enough, no relogin needed.
These features require xrandr version 1.2, which is not available in SXDE 9/07.
Posted by Frank on November 12, 2007 at 01:55 PM CST #
Thanks for a very useful info.
Can I run the xrandr --auto command in any machine? Thanks again.
Posted by W. Wayne Liauh on January 22, 2008 at 06:38 AM CST #
It's not universal. I saw it works on several systems with Intel video chips. I also noticed it doesn't work on some machines with nVidia and ATI chips.
For nVidia video chip, now Solaris has a xserver configuration tool bundled. You could find this tool from 'start' -> 'All Applications' -> 'System Tools' -> NVIDIA X Server Settings. I played with it on a Sun Ultra 40 workstation. It woks fine. You can show screens in several ways: separated desktop, clone view etc. I think it should also work on laptops with nVidia video chip, while I didn't have a chance to try this yet.
Posted by Frank on January 22, 2008 at 10:29 AM CST #
hi frankC i have a compaq presario laptop and i m not able to solve the projector problem even with your solution i have a laptop with intel processor
Posted by MACHINE on March 12, 2008 at 02:31 AM CST #
1. Make sure you are using the latest release of Open Solaris.
2. You can try a 'hot-key' solution available on OpenSolaris web site now: http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/laptop/windmill/video/
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