Arch Linux

gentlemanfinn

Member

From: Kingdom of Denmark

Registered: 2006-10-13

Posts: 16

Dual-Monitors, help with xorg.conf

Hi

I'm trying to set a two monitors, the first is a CRT screen and the second is a LCD screen both running from the same gfx-card.
The setup should be the CRT monitor as the primary monitor running 1280x1024, and the LCD as the secondary running 1024x768.

Here's my xorg.conf

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "DualHead"
    Screen      0  "Screen[0]" 0 0
    Screen           "Screen[1]" Above "Screen[0]"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "USB Mouse" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"

# Additional fonts: Locale, Gimp, TTF...
#    FontPath     "/usr/share/lib/X11/fonts/latin2/75dpi"
#    FontPath     "/usr/share/lib/X11/fonts/latin2/100dpi"
# True type and type1 fonts are also handled via xftlib, see /etc/X11/XftConfig!
    RgbPath      "/usr/share/X11/rgb"
    ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc:unscaled"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/PEX"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/cyrillic"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ttf/western"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ttf/decoratives"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/truetype"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/openoffice"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-bitstream-vera"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latex-ttf-fonts"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/defoma/CID"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/defoma/TrueType"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load  "ddc"  # ddc probing of monitor
    Load  "dbe"
    Load  "dri"
    Load  "extmod"
    Load  "glx"
    Load  "bitmap" # bitmap-fonts
    Load  "type1"
    Load  "freetype"
    Load  "record"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option        "AllowMouseOpenFail" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Keyboard0"
    Driver      "keyboard"
    Option        "CoreKeyboard"
    Option        "XkbRules" "xorg"
    Option        "XkbModel" "microsoftmult"
    Option        "XkbLayout" "dk"
    Option        "XkbOptions" "altwin:super_win"
    Option        "XkbVariant" ""
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "USB Mouse"
    Driver      "mouse"
    Option      "Buttons" "7"
    Option        "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
    Option        "SendCoreEvents" "true"
    Option        "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
    Option        "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
    Option        "ButtonMapping" "1 2 3 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier       "Monitor[0]"
    Option             "VendorName" "AOC"
    Option             "ModelName" "7Gr+"
    DisplaySize      336 269 # 96 DPI @ 1280x1024
#    VertRefresh 55.0 - 100.0 
    VertRefresh    80.0
    Option             "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier       "Monitor[1]"
    Option             "VendorName" "Phillips"
    Option             "ModelName" "15PF4121"
    DisplaySize     269 201       # 96 DPI @ 1024x768
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier       "Device[0]"
    Driver           "fglrx"
    Option        "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
    BusID        "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device[1]"
    Driver         "fglrx"
    BoardName   "ATI Radeon 9600XT"
    Option        "TVStandard"        "PAL-B"
#    Option        "UseInternalAGPGART"    "yes"
    BusID        "PCI:1:0:1"

    Screen        1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "Screen[0]"
    Device     "Device[0]"
    Monitor    "Monitor[0]"
    DefaultDepth     24
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport  0 0
        Depth     24
        Modes      "1280x1024"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "Screen[1]"
    Device     "Device[1]"
    Monitor    "Monitor[1]"
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport  0 0
        Depth       24
        Modes      "1024x768"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
    Mode         0666
EndSection

and lspci:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 AR [Radeon 9600]
01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 AR [Radeon 9600] (Secondary)

the LCD is running from a DVI, I don't know if that makes any difference.

When I startx the secondary says It doesn't support "uhm I can't remember and I dont want to kill X to find out because I'm writing this message :-)" and the primary opens up with a wierd resolution and VertRefresh at 60.
If I start xfce instead the same happens to the secondary at first but then xfce changes the resolution to 1024x768 (the max for the LCD to work) and it works on there, but the primary is just a mirror :-(

WhiteMagic

Member

Registered: 2007-03-01

Posts: 85

Re: Dual-Monitors, help with xorg.conf

I recently played around with dualhead and the ATI proprietary drivers so here are my results, perhaps those will be helpfull to you.

I have a similar setup to yours 1280x1024 TFT and 1024x768 CRT using fglrx drivers. I wanted both screens to be used as one big desktop. I got the result with the following stripped down config.

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Default Layout"
    Screen      0  "DualHead" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
    Option        "Xinerama" "False"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load            "dbe"
    Load            "freetype"
    Load            "glx"
    Load            "dri"
    Load            "ddc"

    SubSection "extmod"
        Option        "omit xfree86-dga"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
    Option        "XVideo"                "Enable"
    Option        "Composite"                "Disable"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "Eizo F57"
    HorizSync    30.0 - 96.0
    VertRefresh  50.0 - 160.0
    Option        "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "LG 1970H"
    HorizSync    30.0 - 83.0
    VertRefresh  56.0 - 75.0
    Option        "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "ATI_FGLRX"
    Driver      "fglrx"
    Option        "DesktopSetup" "horizontal,reverse"
        Option      "HSync2"                "30-96"
        Option      "VRefresh2"             "50-160"
    Option        "PairModes" "1280x1024+1024x768"
    BusID       "PCI:2:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier      "DualHead"
    Device          "ATI_FGLRX"
    Monitor         "LG 1970H"
    DefaultDepth     24
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth   24
        Modes   "1280x1024" "1024x768"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
    Mode         0666
EndSection

This setup has two problems.
1. When starting up Xorg uses 1280x1024 on both screens. This is fixed by using xrandr and selection the appropriate entry.
2. Somehow my Xorg calculates my DPI settings completely wrong, so I end up with something like 10x90 DPI which causes some annoances in some programs, e.g. in Acrobat Reader the pages are stretched and one can't read anything. I haven't found out how to fix this thats why I went back to the radeon drivers with xinerama.

I tried some ways to force other DPI settings on my Xorg but it wouldn't accept those, but I did not invest much time into fixing this issue so I'll sometimes go back and try it.

Regarding your config file, to me it looks like you're setting up 2 seperate screens which would require seperate window managers to run in them, and you thus would be unable to move windows betwwen the two. If you use Xinerama with these two screens it should work as one big desktop. That's what I use with the radeon drivers.
I didn't try to get my setup done with Xinerama using the fglrx drivers as I was glad to have it running the way I had after reading and editing xorg config files for too many hours.

A link that helped me is a thread on the ubuntu forums about configuring xorg using the fglrx drivers.