3 monitors, Nvidia base mosaic, works except desktop backgrounds?

ekrboi · 2014-06-14 22:54:45

First of all hello all. Been using XFCE for a long time, usually I can figure issues out or find a solution online. Not this though.. I can't be the only 3 monitor Nvidia XFCE user?! Anyways, I am using Xubuntu 14.04 so my XFCE is recent. I have 2 Nvidia GTX 580's, with 2 monitors on one card and one monitor on the other. I have had 2 monitors for a while and picked up a 3rd when it went on sale the other day. Never has a single issue with the 2 monitors. I setup the 3 monitors with nvidia-settings to use base mosaic, restarted and was met with the desktop spanned across all three. Everything seems to work as it should EXCEPT for the background. After booting all three monitors have the default XFCE mouse background instead of the background I had before enabling the 3rd monitor which I thought was a bit odd but ok.. ill just change it to a 5760x1080p wallpaper and tell it to span right? you would think but no haha smile There is nothing I have tried that allows me to change the background on any of the monitors much less span across them.

In desktop settings nothing changes when I select a wallpaper.. I can't even change it to none. The only monitor that even gives me the spanned option is the left one.. the middle and right screen do not show it. I have tried manually setting it in xfce4-settings-editor.. nothing changes even after a restart. Cant even set it to no background. It's almost like parts of xfce are not treating it as one screen? My only guess is xfce is not quite sure how to treat the background so it forces the default. As you can see from the screen shot below the 3rd monitors desktop settings dedaults to xfce folder instead of backdrops like normal. If I revert to my old xorg.conf with only the 2 monitors working. the background is what it was before I added the 3rd and I can change backgrounds again... ?

I installed fresh on a spare drive just to see.. it does the same thing as thats what the screenshot is from. I installed ubuntu desktop (unity.. gross) and selected it from login instead of xfce and it works fine. If you need anymore info from me let me know!

http://i.imgur.com/bRxz9AS.jpg <--- put the SS there as its 5760x1080

ToZ · 2014-06-14 23:31:10

I don't have 3 monitors to be able to test this so I'll take a guess.

First, can you post back your current displays xfconf configuration settings:

xfconf-query -c displays -lv

Then, once with the two monitor setup and then with the three monitor setup, run the following command:

xfconf-query -c displays -m

...then try to change the wallpaper. Post back the results.

My guess is that you may have hit a bug where the wrong xfconf parameters are being hit. But lets have a look at the results of those commands to see.

ekrboi · 2014-06-15 04:26:56

xfconf-query -c displays -lv

returns nothing with 2 or 3 monitors.

xfconf-query -c displays -m

starts to monitor but returns nothing with either 2 or 3 monitors.. changed bg multiple times with 2 monitors.

It is some kind of bug between xfce and nvidias base mosaic setting. With 2 monitors it uses the default twin view. With 3 you have to use either xinerama which has many draw backs or base moasic mode. If i turn off the 3rd monitor and force just the two monitors to use base mosaic I get the same stuck background behavior.

Last edited by ekrboi (2014-06-15 04:40:30)

ToZ · 2014-06-15 11:43:02

Ooops, my bad (wrong channel). Try these instead:

xfconf-query -c xfce4-desktop -lv

...and:

xfconf-query -c xfce4-desktop -m

ekrboi · 2014-07-11 21:32:42

Sorry I dissapeared on this.. I tried some other DE's for a bit.. aaaannnddd now im back because XFCE just works for me. Anyhow, I have some more info for this, I am now on Arch Linux and their official repos are still at 4.10 so that is what I installed at first and the wallpapers were working just fine. I then started updating the bits with devel packages and I figured out that the 4.11 xfdesktop causes it. I have everything else but xfdesktop updated and wallpapers are still working. As soon as I update xfdesktop to the latest devel release I get the exact behavior I was describing in the first post when on Xubuntu 14.04 which makes sense since they are using the updated stuff already.

I will run the commands you asked me for before and let you know what I get.

xfconf-query -c xfce4-desktop -lv (same with xfdesktop xfdesktop-4.10.2-2 and 4.11.6-1)

/backdrop/screen0/monitor0/image-path         /home/damadone/Pictures/Wallpapers/5760x1080/cubes.jpg
/backdrop/screen0/monitor0/last-image         /home/damadone/Pictures/Wallpapers/5760x1080/cubes.jpg
/backdrop/screen0/monitor0/last-single-image  /home/damadone/Pictures/Wallpapers/5760x1080/cubes.jpg
/backdrop/screen0/monitor1/image-path         /usr/share/backgrounds/xfce/xfce-blue.jpg
/backdrop/screen0/monitor1/last-image         /usr/share/backgrounds/xfce/xfce-blue.jpg
/backdrop/screen0/monitor1/last-single-image  /usr/share/backgrounds/xfce/xfce-blue.jpg
/backdrop/screen0/monitor2/image-path         /usr/share/backgrounds/xfce/xfce-blue.jpg
/backdrop/screen0/monitor2/last-image         /usr/share/backgrounds/xfce/xfce-blue.jpg
/backdrop/screen0/monitor2/last-single-image  /usr/share/backgrounds/xfce/xfce-blue.jpg
/backdrop/screen0/xinerama-stretch            true
/desktop-icons/file-icons/show-filesystem     false
/desktop-icons/file-icons/show-home           false
/desktop-icons/file-icons/show-removable      false
/desktop-icons/file-icons/show-trash          false
/desktop-icons/icon-size                      32
/last/window-height                           503
/last/window-width                            612

with xfconf-query -c xfce4-desktop -m it starts monitoring on 4.11.6 and when I try and change the background it does nothing.. on 4.10.2 I get the expected behavior, which looks like the following after messing with the bg.

Start monitoring channel "xfce4-desktop":

set: /backdrop/screen0/monitor0/image-path
set: /backdrop/screen0/monitor0/last-single-image
set: /backdrop/screen0/xinerama-stretch
set: /backdrop/screen0/xinerama-stretch
set: /backdrop/screen0/monitor0/image-path
set: /backdrop/screen0/monitor0/last-single-image

EDIT* I decided to try and find a time range for when the bug was introduced. luckily (?) it didnt take long... the first one I tried was 4.11.0 and it wont let me change the wall paper ether. So it's a commit between 4.10.2 (2013-03-10) and 4.11.0 (2013-09-29).

EDIT Again.. kinda just pooling info here now.. am proabably going to file a bug report.

While monitoring xfce4-desktop I found that if I right click on an image in thunar and set as wallpaper it does register the change, but still the background stays the same.

Last edited by ekrboi (2014-07-11 22:26:48)

ToZ · 2014-07-11 23:13:06

For 4.11, they made some major changes to xfdesktop to be able to support wallpaper/desktop functionality. AFAKT, they changed the way the channel properties work. The fact that it worked on 4.10 and now on 4.11, there are no visible changes being made to the existing xfconf tree, would seem to indicate a bug of some sort. I can't think of any suggestion to work around this. Perhaps at this point in time, it is best to create a bug report.

eric_the_idiot · 2014-07-12 17:47:26

Hmm, yes, it doesn't seem to write in the new property format. We'll need to narrow down the issue, can you try compiling with the --enable-debug=full configure option? If you can, try running xfdesktop-settings from the command line, you can either paste a the full log into dpaste.com and link here or find the line like:
DBG[main.c:789] xfdesktop_settings_generate_per_workspace_binding_string(): name /backdrop/screen0/monitoreDP1/workspace1/last-image
Which should at least see if it's corrently detecting the screen/monitor/workspace combo correctly.

ekrboi · 2014-07-14 21:23:19

I KNOW I replied to this yesterday.. hmm.. dunno what happened to it. I am having some issues compiling with --enable-debug=full on arch... ill figure it out though. you mention "it doesn't seem to write in the new property format" what is the new property format? can you link me to docs? wondering if I can manually set it for now if nothing else.

EDIT* ok so I was already at the current devel releases of 4.11 for everything but xfdesktop. I am having problems getting xfdesktop to compile with --enable-debug=full.. but --enable-debug is fine and does spit out some things.

http://pastebin.com/wYpS96DE

just brainstorming could the name "monitorGPU-0.DVI-I-3" be the problem? Since it doesn't set it with the wallpaper chooser I tried to add it with settings-editor and as soon as I type the . from "monitorGPU-0.DVI-I-3" the option to save "greys out".

EDIT Again* confirmed.. it is the ".". I manually edited the xml file and I have changed the background on one monitor.. but it is not spanning. Selecting span, or any other option for that matter in xfdesktop-settings (zoom, stretch, etc...) does not spit anything out to console. I need to figure out how to manually make it span.. time to dig some more. Getting somewhere though!!!

Last edited by ekrboi (2014-07-14 23:08:52)

ekrboi · 2014-07-14 22:50:43

Got it! It's a work around, but at least it's working. Considering the back end doesn't mind the .'s I immagine that it would be trivial to fix the front ends to accomodate them. thanks for pointing me in the right direction! Now at least I have as much info as possible for submitting a bug report.

here is how I ended up editing the xml...

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<channel name="xfce4-desktop" version="1.0">
  <property name="backdrop" type="empty">
    <property name="single-workspace-mode" type="bool" value=""/>
    <property name="single-workspace-number" type="int" value="0"/>
    <property name="screen0" type="empty">
      <property name="monitorGPU-0.DVI-I-3" type="empty">
        <property name="workspace0" type="empty">
          <property name="last-image" type="string" value="/home/damadone/Pictures/Wallpapers/5760x1080/cubes.jpg"/>
          <property name="image-style" type="int" value="6"/>
        </property>
      </property>
    </property>
  </property>
  <property name="last" type="empty">
    <property name="window-width" type="int" value="605"/>
    <property name="window-height" type="int" value="501"/>
  </property>
  <property name="desktop-icons" type="empty">
    <property name="file-icons" type="empty">
      <property name="show-home" type="bool" value="false"/>
      <property name="show-filesystem" type="bool" value="false"/>
      <property name="show-trash" type="bool" value="false"/>
      <property name="show-removable" type="bool" value="false"/>
    </property>
  </property>
</channel>

Last edited by ekrboi (2014-07-14 22:53:26)

ekrboi · 2014-07-15 04:17:49

Im running into other trouble involving the desktop as well. Say I have file roller open and I try to drag n drop from it to an open thunar window. Mid drag between file-roller and thunar it crosses the dekstop. As soon as the cursor touches the desktop I get a "Destination folder "(null)" does not exist. Do you want to create it?" dialog from file roller which halts it. I can cross ANYTHING but the desktop in the path of a drag n drop. could this be a product of the mishandling of my monitor name by xfdesktop as well?

Last edited by ekrboi (2014-07-15 04:21:03)

eric_the_idiot · 2014-07-15 17:17:17

Thanks for tracking that down, I'll dig through xfconf to see if this can be fixed without breaking other components. Otherwise we may have to fallback to monitor numbers when the name contains something xfconf doesn't like.

As for your second problem, xfdesktop learns of your desktop directory from the g_get_user_special_dir see: https://developer.gnome.org/glib/stable … pecial-dir and https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xd … irectories

ekrboi · 2014-07-15 22:31:30

thanks for the special dir tip. New to arch.. you take sooooo many things for granted that are handled by default with other distros. It's been a great learning experience and I cannot see ever going back to debian/buntu's now. I have 3 whole pages of notes here so that I can reference them for when I need to reinstall or setup another machine.

ekrboi · 2014-07-16 03:17:52

Eric. please let me know if there is anythinhg i can do to help. I tried other DE's when I picked up my 3rd monitor since xfce wasn't acting right. The experience was horrible. xfce ftw!

Last edited by ekrboi (2014-07-16 03:47:00)

eric_the_idiot · 2014-07-16 17:31:56

I'll hopefully have time to start looking into this issue on my next day off.

ekrboi · 2014-07-16 21:50:46

Sounds good. I will check back regularly.. if you would like to send me diffs I can patch, build and test if you would like. Or feel free to shoot me emails so that I get them instantly. I dunno if you can see my email in my profile here.. but you can see it in bugzilla (Bug 11021).

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#1 2014-06-14 22:54:45

3 monitors, Nvidia base mosaic, works except desktop backgrounds?

#2 2014-06-14 23:31:10

Re: 3 monitors, Nvidia base mosaic, works except desktop backgrounds?

#3 2014-06-15 04:26:56

Re: 3 monitors, Nvidia base mosaic, works except desktop backgrounds?

#4 2014-06-15 11:43:02

Re: 3 monitors, Nvidia base mosaic, works except desktop backgrounds?

#5 2014-07-11 21:32:42

Re: 3 monitors, Nvidia base mosaic, works except desktop backgrounds?

#6 2014-07-11 23:13:06

Re: 3 monitors, Nvidia base mosaic, works except desktop backgrounds?

#7 2014-07-12 17:47:26

Re: 3 monitors, Nvidia base mosaic, works except desktop backgrounds?

#8 2014-07-14 21:23:19

Re: 3 monitors, Nvidia base mosaic, works except desktop backgrounds?

#9 2014-07-14 22:50:43

Re: 3 monitors, Nvidia base mosaic, works except desktop backgrounds?

#10 2014-07-15 04:17:49

Re: 3 monitors, Nvidia base mosaic, works except desktop backgrounds?

#11 2014-07-15 17:17:17

Re: 3 monitors, Nvidia base mosaic, works except desktop backgrounds?

#12 2014-07-15 22:31:30

Re: 3 monitors, Nvidia base mosaic, works except desktop backgrounds?

#13 2014-07-16 03:17:52

Re: 3 monitors, Nvidia base mosaic, works except desktop backgrounds?

#14 2014-07-16 17:31:56

Re: 3 monitors, Nvidia base mosaic, works except desktop backgrounds?

#15 2014-07-16 21:50:46

Re: 3 monitors, Nvidia base mosaic, works except desktop backgrounds?

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