multiple screens - xorg and nvidia

voodoodoc · Apprentice Joined: 01 Feb 2004 Posts: 158

I have two monitors and I would like to run a single x screen on each of them. I'll be clear right off the bat. TwinView is not what I want. I have that working and it is annoying with one monitor being a nice giant lcd and the other a crappy crt that was laying around as junk. So what I want is for each monitor to be a different screen. The video card is an Nvidia Quadro FX. I plug both monitors into the card set up my xorg.conf file and restart x and it only shows up on one monitor, the crt.

How does the Xorg file know which monitor to apply which settings to. I switched around the cables to see if it made any difference and still the crt starts up. If I unplug it and restart x then the lcd roars to life. Clearly when I get this working I can fine tune it with different settings for each monitor.

How does Xorg know which server layout to use if I define more than one. Am I just not seeing this in the config file somewhere.

Also there are no errors apparent in the logs.

Here are the releveant sections of my xorg.conf file:

GENsnoop · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 09 Mar 2004 Posts: 138

I would like to see a solve for this .. I have 2 monitors and I was thinking of setting this up .. someone know of a guide or feel like giving the answer would be most appreciated
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j0elbYte · Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2004 8:12 pm Post subject:

Haven't touched this before, but I think that you should give the server a clockline in the Device section.. This adress points to the respective outputs.. i think.. Try to run "Xorg -configure" from console as root, then check the output in ~root/... lspci can also show these numbers...
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printf("format string what?");

voodoodoc · Apprentice Joined: 01 Feb 2004 Posts: 158

nightm4re · Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2004 8:49 pm Post subject:

i have this setup. here's my xorgconf.

voodoodoc · Apprentice Joined: 01 Feb 2004 Posts: 158

Ok, checked out nightmare's xorg.conf file and another one that was posted in another post. Made some changes and still no luck. Although now the lcd is the monitor that starts up but the resolution is like 1024x768 instead of 1280x1024 as the config file dictates.

Here is my new xorg stuff

j0elbYte · Posted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 12:41 pm Post subject:

voodoc: You're right, i meant the BusID.. PCI:00:00.. That is somewhat relevant i guess? And if you probe with Xorg -configure, it will include those numbers in the new example config
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printf("format string what?");

voodoodoc · Apprentice Joined: 01 Feb 2004 Posts: 158

BusID is only relevant if you have multiple video cards so X knows which card to use for what. With only one video card it is not required, but I did include it anyway in the most recent version. Actually just for the heck of it I included it as PCI 1 and as PCI 2 and it makes no difference. (The card is actually on PCI bus 2 there is nothing on bus 1).

As far as using the xorg -configure, no automatic type things like that work with Nvidia cards usually at least that has been my experience in the past with 3 different nvidia cards.

j0elbYte · Posted: Mon Nov 08, 2004 8:25 pm Post subject:

That was news for me, thanks for clearing things up
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printf("format string what?");

voodoodoc · Apprentice Joined: 01 Feb 2004 Posts: 158

In the end I just gave up and decided to use nvidia's twinview even though its kind of annoying when you maximize a window.

kiss-o-matic · Guru Joined: 19 Jul 2004 Posts: 423 Location: Tokyo

Have you tried defining your modelines? I've had some widescreen 24" monitors for a while, and only recently did we get them to work in 1900x1200. This is for a quad display (20" monitors) that didn't require it, but the modelines were left in after the copy and paste job. I cut out some of the irrelevant sections.

voodoodoc · Apprentice Joined: 01 Feb 2004 Posts: 158

Modelines not really relevant in my case. Thats all well and good. The problem I have is I do not think my applications are Xinerama aware. I am using Nvidia's twinview and from what I read the reason it is "incompatible" with Xinerama is beacuse it calls off to Xinerama so that is why you don't explicitly turn on Xinerama, although I did try that and it made no difference so who cares. I changed my use flags to reflect Xinerama I'll recompile something when I get some more time and see if it works ok, might have to recompile gnome, which is not a big deal on this machine thank god.

Right now I have my crt (which sucks compared to the lcd) running at low res so I can crank of the very refresh rate and save my eyes but I need to enable the larger than physical size desktop, so I can pan around the screen, that way everything fits in the lcd and the crt I just pan no big deal.

The thing I really do not understand is how X determines which monitor is which.
Say I have

Section Monitor A stuff
Section Montor B stuff

Now what determines which monitor physcally corresponds with Monitor A stuff, it would be nice to know but in the end it does not really matter, just one of those things. So basically here is a working twin view enabled xorg config file for a nice lcd and a crappy crt using an Nvidia Quadra card.