[plug] Detecting an external monitor before X starts

[Steve Baker]

Adam Davin wrote:
> Hi All, 
>
> On Fri, 8 Jun 2007 09:00:05 +0800 (WST)
> Michael Holland <myk at myk.id.au> wrote:
>   
>> On Thu, 7 Jun 2007, Steve Baker wrote:
>>     
>>> What I would like to do is to detect at system boot time (BEFORE X
>>> starts) if an external monitor is present, and pre-set the
>>> appropriate
>>>       
>> If Bill's approach doesn;t suit, you want the EDID data that he
>> mentioned. 'apt-get install read-edid' and grep the output of
>> 'get-edid'. Or you could run the X server with appropriate args, so
>> it just logs the EDID data and quits.
>>     
>
> I run X with nvidia Xinerama here, I have set up a "single screen mode"
> which keeps the full size desktop but turns off one of the monitors.
> I did this because several programs (games and suchlike) try to centre
> in the middle of the screen which, with xinerama ends up split across
> the two screens (half on one and half on the other.. ) .. by using
> "C+A+ +/-" I can switch through the modes and sizes.. The last of the
> "MetaModes" turns off the Secondary monitor in this case.
>   

Thanks Bill, Michael and Adam for the advice.

Michael's suggestion seemed closest to what I wanted, however I've since 
found that read-edid doesn't work on amd64 architectures.  D'oh!  I'll 
have a crack at Adam's solution and see how well that suits my situation.

Regards,
Steve