mjhjmtu

I must use a VGA-to-DVI cable and a HDMI cable to run two monitors. I'm trying to invert the colors on both monitors but I can only invert one of them:

$ xcalib -invert -alter -s 0 #works


$ xcalib -invert -alter -s 1
X Error of failed request: BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)
 Major opcode of failed request: 129 (XFree86-VidModeExtension)
 Minor opcode of failed request: 19 (XF86VidModeGetGammaRampSize)
 Value in failed request: 0x17
 Serial number of failed request: 10
 Current serial number in output stream: 10

I unplugged the HDMI cable and plugged it back in again. Now, the xcalib -invert -alter -s 0 command inverts the other monitor. In other words, both monitors are inverted for the moment but I had to re-connect one monitor to get that to happen.

Here is my setup:

$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 3840 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192
VGA-0 connected 1920x1080+1920+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 510mm x 287mm
 1920x1080 60.0*+
 1680x1050 60.0 
 1280x1024 60.0 
 1440x900 59.9 
 1280x720 60.0 
 1024x768 60.0 
 800x600 60.3 
 640x480 60.0 
 720x400 70.1 
HDMI-0 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 510mm x 287mm
 1920x1080 60.0*+
 1680x1050 59.9 
 1280x1024 60.0 
 1440x900 59.9 
 1280x720 60.0 
 1024x768 60.0 
 800x600 60.3 
 640x480 60.0 
 720x400 70.1 

Graphics card:

$ lspci |egrep -i vga
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RS880 [Radeon HD 4200]

This is Ubuntu server 12.04 LTS w/gnome-panel. The problem still occurs on Ubuntu 14.04 but the work-around does not work.

You won't be able to use xcalib to invert your monitor. You will have to use the following utility to overcome this limitation.

Note that as of date of last testing (2014, xcalib version 0.8) xcalib
has not been able to invert the colors on all monitors in a
multi-monitor setup, because all monitors are presented by the X11
server as a single screen. Thus this limitation is coming from the X11
server. xrandr-invert-colors does not have this limitation, because it
uses XRandR API, which correctly handles all attached monitors.

Reference: https://github.com/zoltanp/xrandr-invert-colors

From trial and error xcalib's -screen parameter takes the zero indexed number of your monitor according to your xrandr output, ie, in your case xcalib -s 0 (the default) will control VGA-0 and xcalib -s 1 will control HDMI-0.