[Dri-devel] Switching PanelOff to on by command line?

[Brouard N. <nic...@li...>]

Hi,
I am not sure that Dri-devel is the right place to ask this question but
here it is:

I have found in the latest Radeon Drivers for XFree86 the new PanelOff
option which when set to "on" in XFree86Config-4  shuts the LCD of your
laptop but keeps your external monitor on.
It is particularly useful when your laptop is plugged into a replicator
which itself is connected to a wider 19" external monitor, a true
keyboard and a true mouse  (USB). Then you can close the cover of your
laptop and use it as a desktop.

My former Laptop was a Dell laptop where the switch was done
automatically via the bios (I think), but now with this Sony Z1 Laptop
which has an ATI Radeon Mobility M6 LY video card I need to do it by
software and use this PanelOff option.

Thus, I have two different XF86Config files, one for the dock station
(replicator) where PanelOff is set to "on" and a second where it is
"off" or commented. Thus I use two commands, startx and startx-dock,
depending on if the laptop is in its dock or not. It is working fine.

But now I want to switch "dynamically" from one setting to another
without shutting down the X server. And here is my question: can I
modify the setting of the radeon card while XWindows is running in order
to just switch PanelOff from on to off with a command line program?

This command line program could be also useful while presenting on a
barco in order to safe power by shutting the LCD and teaching without a
powercard. The new Intel Centrino laptops (like this Sony) can use the
recent ndiswrapper (ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net) modules in order to
access Internet wireless on Linux. Typical autonomy of Pentium M is
about 5 hours which really enables your to teach or present wireless
(you still need a barco wired!). 

While googling I found a recent tvo_set command line program from 
Federico Ulivi (http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/gatos/ati.2/)
and he just wrote me the following excerpt:

"Hi,
I gave a look at your question and I think that in principle it should
be possible to implement a "paneloff" switch through something like
tvo_set. You should create a new xv attribute in radeon_video.c and
connect this attribute to the part in radeon_driver.c where paneloff
logic is located (e.g. you could call a function in radeon_driver.c
whenever your xv attribute is modified).
Once this is in place, it should be very simple to change tvo_set to
modify this attribute under user command.
HTH.

Bye,
Federico Ulivi"

(I send a BCC to him in order to avoid archiving his email).

But meanwhile I got one answer from redhat people telling me to ask 
the DRI-Devel team to know if somebody had already thought to this
question and could give advices. It is also true that I am closer to an
end-user than a developper (I am just doing a small contribution to
Linux on http://sauvy.ined.fr/~brouard/sony but can't spend too much
time).

I also found i810switch http://vorlon.ces.cwru.edu/~ames/i810switch/
which concerns another chipset than the radeon but with the same current
need. The commercial Xaccel program has the facility to switch (with
ALT-tab) but their radeon drivers do not work correctly on this Sony Z1
(Xfree works well on 1400x1050 24bpp).

Any information will be appreciated.

--
Nicolas Brouard