mdmlogin multi monitor support lacking

[Jessicatz]

I'm using a laptop with two external screens attached, and inside Mint I disabled the laptop screen (because it's always closed) and use just the external screens.
Mint properly honors the ~/.config/monitors.xml configuration, but mdmlogin does not. In particular, the setting that defines the primary screen is important (in my case), because that's the screen I need the login prompt on.

So far mdmlogin doesn't show anything on my primary screen (left-most), and thus the login prompt is always hidden, requiring me to type my user/pass blindly.
mdmlogin should honor the monitors.xml config file (imo).

[ChurchX]

Imho there should be first some discussion as to what most popular multimonitor config might be
My personal choice - mirrored screens on both builtin and external monitor, with redetecting from time to time attached monitors or doing that after poweron/hybernate/suspend/lid open/close events), for same login prompt to be displayed everywhere (drawback - it might look worse, if display device has higher resolution, then lesser one from both), with user desktop configuration (possibly different) applied only after login.
Similar alternate configuration - also mirror screens just on lesser/worst one use xrandr scaling >1, so that biggest resolution gets used, scaled up (and worse picture quality) - on lesser one.
Also there could be some reasonable common small resolution with mirrored displays set, +button in mdm screen of drop down list with selectable some other common resolutions and remembering choice (+keyboard combo to reset to defaults of smaller resolution in case if user errors with choosing undisplayable one).
Also there might be some Display Settings integration that would generate 'mdm-only' monitors.xml, or shell script that runs xrandr to set custom configurations.

[clefebvre]

Well, that's tricky... because typically mdm isn't part of your user session, so it can only obey system configuration. Whatever is in ~ relates to one particular user, not the entire system.

I take your point though, we need to be able to tell MDM which monitor to use. Maybe that can be added in mdmsetup.

[Jessicatz]

You could also display the login box on the screen with the mouse cursor
(and move it when the mouse moves).

On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 12:04 AM, Clement Lefebvre <notifications@github.com

wrote:

Well, that's tricky... because typically mdm isn't part of your user
session, so it can only obey system configuration. Whatever is in ~ relates
to one particular user, not the entire system.

I take your point though, we need to be able to tell MDM which monitor to
use. Maybe that can be added in mdmsetup.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/62#issuecomment-37480220
.

[clefebvre]

Yes, but the mouse cursor could start in the other monitor as well.. that's not ideal either.

[clefebvre]

Fixed in git.

greeter/PrimaryMonitor added to settings and to mdmsetup.