Prevent external monitors from shutting off when laptop lid is closed?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How can I tell Ubuntu to do nothing when I close my laptop lid?

I'm running my laptop essentially as a desktop, I have two external monitors hooked up, a bluetooth keyboard, and a wireless USB mouse. It's plugged into my speaker system as well. What I'd really like to do is to be able to shut the laptop lid without it automatically disabling video output to my monitors. Is there a way I can make this happen by tweaking some configuration value?

Solution 1

All that needs to be done is to edit the following key and set it to "nothing":

gconftool-2 --type string --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/buttons/lid_ac "nothing"

Then, magically, nothing will happen :)

Solution 2

The top answer to this question does a good job of explaining how to do this for both AC and battery modes, along with instructions on how to change it back to blanking the screen: How can I tell Ubuntu to do nothing when I close my laptop lid?

Comments

[Vilmantas Baranauskas]

You may want to mark these ubuntu bugs as affecting you too: bugs.launchpad.net/gnome-power/+bug/416236 bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-power-manager/+bug/… bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/lucid/+source/gnome-power-manager/‌​…

[Erigami]

This doesn't work in 12.04.

[ditoslav]

Does not work on elementary os. only resets the settings