[xmonad] modal window gets placed on unplugged monitor, makes system unusable

[Lara Michaels]

Hello,

I can always reproduce this behavior. I am running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and was going to post this as a bug report on gnome-keyring, but now suspect I can probably work around this within xmonad.

In short: when using a laptop that will only at times be connected to an external monitor but also used "by itself", is there a way to make sure that a modal window will always get placed in a currently visible part of my desktop area? My problem is that when I boot my laptop by itself, a modal window that grabs all input focus (gnome-keyring's "please insert passphrase", which often pops up on Ubuntu systems if there is a known, encrypted wifi network within range) is getting placed in my external monitor which... is not plugged to the computer at all. The result is that no elements of the Gnome UI work at all: neither the menus on the panel nor (Gnome) keyboard shortcuts to launch apps do anything, which makes the system unusable.

More generally (ie, besides a solution to this particular problem with gnome-keyring), is there a way for me to make sure xmonad will not place windows on parts of my screen that are inaccessible when my laptop is by itself? I think I have been experiencing a similar difficulty with Skype, where it would start but I couldn't see it. I thought: Skype crashed again, let me delete its config. That worked, but now I think it might have worked because Skype (by remembering its previous window position) was asking xmonad to place it on the external screen which was not (at that time) connected to the computer and thus its window stayed invisible for me (though skype was running).

Not sure this made any sense, I tried my best. : )

Many thanks for any help and best!

~l