I accidentally disabled my monitors, so when I log in I land on a blank, back-lit screen. I can open terminals with Ctrl+Alt+F#, so how do I enable the monitor from terminal?
I tried xrandr
, but it can't open display. xset
does not work either. I found this question which closely resembles my problem. The answer provides a script to be put in /etc/X11/Xreset.d
.
Running it does not solve my problem (though it is likely I don't understand how to use it properly). I think I somehow made the new default to be "disable monitors".
Running Ubuntu Studio 13.10. I do not have nVidia drivers. I can't find an xorg.conf
file to remove. Thankful for any and all input!
Edit: Output of command xrandr -d :0
Screen 0: minimum 320x200, current 1366 x 768, maximum 32767 x 32767
LVDS1 connected 1366x768+-32768+-32768 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 192mm
1366x768 60.0*
1360x768 59.8 60.0
1024x768 60.0
800x600 60.3 56.2
640x480 59.9
VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VIRTUAL1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
Still being a CLI beginner I fail to understand from man xrandr
how to switch on (there is an off option) or enable displays. Output of xrandr --auto
is Can't open display
Edit 2: Output of xrandr -d :0 --auto
Configure crtc 0 failed
Maybe I just have to reinstall X11?
Edit 3: Outputs of suggested commands / which xset commands I tried:
xrandr -d :0 output LVDS1 --auto
configure crtc 0 failed
xset q
and xset dpms force on
both return
unable to open display ''''
No difference for sudo
commands.
Edit 4: More futile attempts and the potential discovery of a security issue
-
4.1 I've tried to reinstall Xorg and X11, then I ran
sudo apt-get install --reinstall xserver*
which failed with this output:(many versions of this:)
Note, selecting 'xserver-xorg-something' for regex 'xserver*'
(next:)
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: xserver-xorg-input-mtrack : Conflicts: xserver-xorg-input-multitouch but 1.0~rc2+git20110312-2build4 is to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
-
4.2 Next I logged in as guest and logged in as myself through tty Ctrl+Alt+F# and ran the same xrand commands as above (OP and edits 1-3), with the same output as far as I can see.
-
4.3 Then I created a new_user with full admin rights and repeated 4.2 via tty.
-
4.4 SECURITY ISSUE? No, just a need of awareness. Not related to this subject, details at launchpad
It begins looking like a system reinstall is necessary 🙁
Best Answer
After running this command switch immediately to the tty where the screen is black, and after 5 seconds the screen should show up.
The
xrandr command
will turn on your main screen. It only seems to work if you're currently on the tty where your display manager is run, hence thesleep
to give you some time to be able to switch.