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GNOME Metacity dual screen issue in OpenSolaris 2009.06

With the latest OpenSolaris 2009.06, maximizing windows managed by Metacity (GNOME) will maximize the windows across both screens. This is due to an issue that Metacity was trying to use a wrong Xinerama type. This issue is fixed in the mercurial repository. However, the fix was not on time to make it into the final release of OpenSolaris 2009.06. But, there is a quick workaround for this issue. Here is the set of instructions.

Backup your current metacity

$ pfexec cp /usr/bin/metacity /usr/bin/metacity.orig

Download the fixed Metacity binary from developer's site and replace the original binary

$ wget http://www.gnome.org/~erwannc/bugs/8748/metacity -O /tmp/metacity
$ pfexec cp /tmp/metacity /usr/bin/metacity

[STRIKEOUT:Note: Don't do this in one step using wget -O /usr/bin/metacity. This broke my system.]

(Optional) By now, your new Metacity should have already started working. If not, replace the current instance by hand

$ metacity --replace

Happy dual-screening on your OpenSolaris 2009.06!


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