I have the same issue.
Laptop , docking station and two monitors. 
When booting on the docking station kde puts monitors in clone mode and sets resolution incorrectly. 

Ideally you would hope that either only one screen is turned on by default or both are turned on but set in extended mode. And in both instances the resolution should be setup properly.

Now if I setup the monitors the way i like and set that as default in systemsettings, on reboots it works as expected. The problem however is when I take the laptop off the dock and boot, I am met with a blank screen. This is not ideal at all. Kde should be able to detect the monitors are no longer attached and fallback to the default monitor being the laptop monitor. 

Gnome seems to deal with monitors more elegantly than kde does. This is a pretty essential piece of functonality that is missing.

I have a similar problem. I use my laptop in a docking station with a 1920x1080 monitor, this monitor is not detected properly when connected via the docking station, so either I have to save my setup "as default" or set the proper resolution manually on every start.

When I save the 1920x1080 external monitor setup "as default", and then later boot the laptop out of the docking station with the internal 1400x1050 monitor, the result is a black screen. Which is understandable because KDE applies the saved krandrrc on startup.

There needs to be some automatic intelligence to ensure the krandrrc is not applied when a different monitor is connected, than the one configured in the krandrrc.

Ah, good to see more comments on this bug... It is really one of these small annoying things to setup the screens every time you change the connected devices - which happens quite often with laptops.

I did a search on bugs.kde.org and found some more bug reports which are similar.

At least these bugs reports are related:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=265959
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=249523
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=300748
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=296603

maybe also:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=183143
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=220752
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=292751

I think the optimal solution would be to save the screen configuration per connected screens, i.e. when I connect my laptop to the docking station, the two monitors on the docking station should be switched on and setup correctly while my laptop display should be off. When removing the laptop from the docking station, the internal display should be switched on automatically. And when I connect my TV to my laptop, I want my main screen to the laptop and additional space on the left for my TV. Of course KDE doesn't know how I want my screens setup when I first connect them, but it could/should detect new connected screens and open the configuration dialog automatically. Once I have setup the screens, KDE should remember this. So whenever I plug in a certain monitor (or monitors), the settings should already be known and no configuration dialog needs to be shown again.

Another related problem I have observed is that just opening the screen setup dialog can change your configuration (before you even click anything). Don't know if that still happens in 4.8 though.

I have not seen the changing of settings just by opening up the 
settings. At least not in 4.8 on debian. I agree with your purposed 
method. If it could save a profile based on the EDID number of the 
monitor it would know how to handle the setup. I have written a script 
to handle my limit setup here. Essentially it will turn on both my 
monitors and configure them if it detects one of them connected. else it 
turns on the laptop monitor only. While this is very basic and not very 
robust or scalable, it does touch on the general principle. Let me know 
what I can do to help.

#!/bin/bash
# this goes in .kde4/env

myvar="$(xrandr -q)"
if [[ $myvar == *"VGA1 connected"* ]]
then
# assuming if one is connected that both are...
xrandr --output LVDS1 --auto;
xrandr --output LVDS1 --off;
xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1920x1080;
xrandr --output HDMI2 --mode 1680x1050 --right-of VGA1;

else
xrandr --output LVDS1 --auto;


On 06/27/2012 06:30 AM, Wolf Behrenhoff wrote:
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=277483
>
> --- Comment #3 from Wolf Behrenhoff<wolf.behrenhoff@gmx.net>  ---
> Ah, good to see more comments on this bug... It is really one of these small
> annoying things to setup the screens every time you change the connected
> devices - which happens quite often with laptops.
>
> I did a search on bugs.kde.org and found some more bug reports which are
> similar.
>
> At least these bugs reports are related:
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=265959
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=249523
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=300748
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=296603
>
> maybe also:
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=183143
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=220752
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=292751
>
> I think the optimal solution would be to save the screen configuration per
> connected screens, i.e. when I connect my laptop to the docking station, the
> two monitors on the docking station should be switched on and setup correctly
> while my laptop display should be off. When removing the laptop from the
> docking station, the internal display should be switched on automatically. And
> when I connect my TV to my laptop, I want my main screen to the laptop and
> additional space on the left for my TV. Of course KDE doesn't know how I want
> my screens setup when I first connect them, but it could/should detect new
> connected screens and open the configuration dialog automatically. Once I have
> setup the screens, KDE should remember this. So whenever I plug in a certain
> monitor (or monitors), the settings should already be known and no
> configuration dialog needs to be shown again.
>
> Another related problem I have observed is that just opening the screen setup
> dialog can change your configuration (before you even click anything). Don't
> know if that still happens in 4.8 though.
>

Is this still an issue with KDE 4.9 for you? I haven't seen this since 4.8.4 on Kubuntu 12.04 AFAICR, so for me this is solved.

I'm sorry, I can (and will) check only in about 2-3 weeks from now, don't have time to upgrade earlier (I'm still at 4.6.5 and the old KMail, so the upgrade will be painful and time consuming).

So finally I updated from 4.6 to 4.9.1 -> the issue still exists.

My laptop is attached to the docking station with two monitors. I save the settings. Then I reboot without docking station. Login screen appears. I login. And then the screen becomes black.

Could you test with a new user, just to rule out there is a setting problem? Moving your old $HOME/.kde/ elsewhere is another option.

Sorry, cannot test at the moment. However, there is work going on and maybe 4.10 will contain a fix, as explained in this blog post:
http://www.progdan.cz/2012/09/display-management-in-kde/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=display-management-in-kde

So I think we can stop discussing this bug here.

Using libkscreen and kscreen from git solve all my problems with multiple screens.