What is monitors.xml?

[Xezlec]

Hello. I've tried tons of linux distros over the years and have never gotten any to work well or consistently on a desktop. I decided to try Mint this time after Ubuntu randomly decided not to work anymore one day upon booting (and never worked again after that).

One of my most common problems on Ubuntu, and now Mint, has been video not working or not responding to changes made by the nvidia-settings program or even manually in xorg.conf. Today I learned that there is an undocumented file, ~/.config/monitors.xml, which seems to interfere with the X server in some way that I do not understand. I can't find anything on the internet about this file (except that deleting it is a panacea for multiple-monitor problems).

Can anyone tell me anything about this file? What creates it? What reads it? What is it for? Why does it often seem to take precedence over xorg.conf? Is this weird, nvidia-settings-breaking behavior a bug or a feature?

Any information at all will be appreciated. Thank you.

[viking777]

The only thing I can tell you about it is that I run 4 different linux distros (all with nvidia graphics) and none of them have a file called monitors.xml anywhere. (and I have dual monitors as well).

[Xezlec]

The only thing I can tell you about it is that I run 4 different linux distros (all with nvidia graphics) and none of them have a file called monitors.xml anywhere. (and I have dual monitors as well).

O_O

Very, very weird. Maybe we'll never know then...

[Xezlec]

Ooh! Found it!

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-859493.html
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-change-di ... randr.html

monitors.xml apparently configures that little monitor settings GUI application in gnome, which in turn runs xrandr to change the display settings on the fly. That's why xorg.conf has no effect -- it gets overridden when gnome runs xrandr. And apparently, before gnome ever starts up, gdm *also* invokes xrandr, and has its own configuration file where you can set how you want xrandr to be invoked there too. Haven't tried this yet, but this may very well be the answer to my problems. I just have to set up all 3 configuration files by hand and everything should work. I hope this information is helpful to someone else too.