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I connected an external screen to my laptop, but my desktop didn't automagically extend to it, as it used to do about a year ago (older version of Ubuntu).

I went to the display settings. The screen was listed there (correct resolution, brand name, etc.). But when i put the switch on 'on' and click 'apply', i get this error:

Failed to apply configuration: %s



GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownMethod: No such interface `org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.XRANDR_2' on object at path /org/gnome/SettingsDaemon/XRANDR

It's been like this for a few months now, but i'd really like to be able to use an external screen/beamer again.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

dconf write /org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/xrandr/active true did nothing and arandr looks pretty incomprehensible to me.
If you are otherwise stymied, it is worth giving xrandr a try. The documentation is here: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Xorg_RandR_1.2#First_discover_what_we_have

And I was able to fix this by doing:

xrandr --current

xrandr --output VGA1 --off

xrandr --output VGA1 --auto --right-of LVDS1

Let me explain these:

The first command is to see what displays I have connected.

$ xrandr --current

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 3200 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192

LVDS1 connected 1280x800+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 261mm x 163mm

1280x800       60.0*+

1024x768       60.0

800x600        60.3     56.2  

640x480        59.9  

VGA1 connected 1920x1080+1280+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 509mm x 286mm

1920x1080      60.0*+

1280x1024      60.0  

1440x900       59.9  

1280x800       59.8  

1152x864       75.0  

1024x768       70.1     60.0  

800x600        60.3     56.2  

640x480        66.7     60.0  

720x400        70.1  

HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

There is much extraneous data, but I only need the names of the two displays. I see:

LVDS1 connected

and

VGA1 connected

And I think it is safe to assume that VGA is the external monitor. So then I turn it off

xrandr --output VGA1 --off

and back on again

xrandr --output VGA1 --auto --right-of LVDS1

and when I move my cursor to the right edge of the laptop screen, it appears on the external monitor. Success.

Calling:

dconf write /org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/xrandr/active true

solved the problem for me.

Depending on your graphics card, its specific configuration tool can do the dual screen configuration too e.g. nvidia-settings, ... an

I came here having issues on display settings after installing Cinnamon in Xubuntu. Doing so gave me two "displays" dialogs, the ubuntu one giving me the gdbus error. Open the other one (Cinnamon) to get it right.

https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/2506#issuecomment-26671162 - thanks

For me installing the gnome-shell desktop and once switch to that and change this setting from there resolved the issue for unity as well.

Try disabling the graphics card drivers, restart, try if it works.

After booting on a live usb and managed to do exactly what I want with the displays (laptop screen on the left- external monitor on the right), I concluded that something must be going on with the drivers of my graphics card. So I disabled them via System Settings>Additional Drivers, rebooted and everything worked as I wanted to.

PS:Tried most of the above, did not seem to work for me.

Hope it helps you too.

I had the same using Settings > Display on 12.04 LTS.

It seems the Gnome Settings Daemon needs to be active for the changes to take effect, and I had accidentally turned it off from the Startup Applications.

Hope this helps.

Restarting gnome-settings-daemon fixed it for me:

gnome-settings-daemon --replace > /dev/null 2>&1 &