Kodi Community Forum

{I am not english, so grammar-errors may occur.}

I have followed this awesome guide:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=XBMCbuntu
to install XBMC on a bootable usb, for my sony vpccw1s1e laptop (Nvidia GeForce 230m).
I have successfully installed everything, including "restricted nvidia drivers" according to the guide.
My only problem now is that I can't get it to use my plasma as an external monitor through hdmi.
Xorg.log rightfully says that it identifies my plasma as DFP1, and selects DFP0 (sony lcd-panel) as default screen.

I used Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" Minimal CD x86 as OS.
I used NVIDIA-Linux-x86-290.10.run to install graphics driver.

Running xrandr returns "Can't open display".
Running nvidia-settings returns "ERROR: The control display is undefined; please run `nvidia-settings --help` for usage information.". GTK2 is installed.

Here is a excerpt from my Xorg.0.log:
SONY AVAMP is a amplifier which redirects HDMI from the laptop to the TV. This is the device i would like to output the screen to.


and here is my xorg.conf:

Here is how you can help me:
Do you have a external monitor that you could connect to your ubuntu laptop?

1. Look at your xorg.conf (/etc/X11/xorg.conf).
   
2. Connect monitor.
   
3. Run nvidia-settings, and configure to run on external monitor.
   
4. If theres's any changes to xorg.conf, report what
   

I've done this myself, editing the xorg.conf file, but how I did this is at home and darn it can't remember what I did.

Give me a couple of hours and I'll dig out the changes I did to switch to external output only. Something like changing 'Device0' to 'Device1'.

I recall I needed to read through xorg's log file to identify my screen and outputs, and if you check this thread it may help with customizing the xorg.conf file.
[LIVE] XBMC Live on laptop with TV

I know its for a laptop but the steps are the same.

Just one hint. make a copy of xorg.conf as xorg.conf.master so you can replace the edited file if things get hairy. I'd recommend making sure you can PuTTy in also.

Rob

Thank you for trying to help me, but I found the solution myself.
I searched Google for something and found this thread:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=101858
i copied some of the settings he uses in his xorg.conf to my xorg.conf so now it looks like this:

I haven't tested whether it's the addition of the second device section, or if it's the line
Option "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP-1"
that does the trick, but I don't care at this point.

Well, I found my notes on how I did this. I hope you can follow how I solved my issue and got xbmc live to output to vga instead of the laptop's lcd screen. For me I was trying to get a DVI port to work, but the principal's the same

Quote:I was trying to run xrandr in a tty after ctrl+alt+f2 from XBMCLive. And it wouldn't give me any output.

So I booted to a livecd of Ubunto and used a desktop terminal in Ubuntu to run xrandr and it worked perfectly. I identified the DVI port as "DVI-D-1".

I then added the following to rc.local to turn the laptop LCD off and switch to the TV over DVI:

Quote:
xrandr --output DVI-D-1 --auto
xrandr --output LVDS-1 --off

However, while the above worked in Ubuntu, the xrandr commands would not run from rc.local in XBMCLive. I know rc.local was running before I inserted these lines as I already used it to enable my wiiremote.

In the end I found a solution by editing my xorg.conf file. I added the line in **** below to the screen section:

Quote:
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device1"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
****Option "ConnectedMonitor" "DVI-D-1"****
Option "NoLogo" "True"
Option "HWCursor" "false"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

The 'ConnectedMonitor' option forces it to default to DVI-D-1 (my TV - I got the monitor reference from /var/log/xorg.0.log). It all seems to be working well so far, it has survived several reboots, with the TV switched both on or off.