Radeon 3650HD laptop LVDS lid open/closed detection problem

[Jerome Glisse]

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 03:31:19PM +0300, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> After fixing the dvi/hdmi detection problem I now have another problem
> with the HP EliteBook 8530p, which has Radeon 3650HD adapter.
> 
> Here's a summary of the environment:
> 
> 	- laptop connected to a docking station.
> 	- external display in use, connected with DVI to the dock.
> 	- laptop lid closed, so internal LVDS display is not used.
> 
> Now, when I start the laptop, I can see the BIOS and grub on the external DVI display.
> All fine so far. I select the Fedora 13 kernel, and Linux starts. I see the Fedora
> graphical boot on the external DVI display, just like it should be. GDM login prompt
> appears on the external DVI display, still everything fine.
> 
> And then it goes wrong. After I login to X, the external display only shows the background
> picture.. it turns out the desktop stuff has been started to the internal LVDS display,
> which shouldn't be used at all since the laptop lid is closed!! 
> 
> When the laptop lid is closed, and external display is connected, I want to use only the external display..
> 
> Any ideas how to troubleshoot this one? 
> 
> -- Pasi
> 

It's better to open bug when you face issue rather than mail, as it's
harder to track information in mail thread than in a bug. Your issue
is not easily fixed because there is many laptop with broken acpi which
report wrong lid status (some of them always report lid closed what ever
is the lid status, other always report lid open, ... i am not expert on
how broken this is but from what i have been told i should rather consider
drinking than trying to look into it and then go to the drinking step).

Bottom line is that lid detection is unreliable thus so far we ignore
it silently. I think the plan is to monitor lid status change and if
we detect change from either open to close or close to open then we
can start assuming that acpi lid status is reliable and act accordingly.

Cheers,
Jerome