Arch Linux

squeegee

Member

From: North Plains, OR

Registered: 2009-02-18

Posts: 10

NVida + 7900GTX + 8800 GTS 512 + 3 LCD's - Single Desktop Fail

I've been trying to get this to work for months - literally months (on Fedora, Ubuntu, Gentoo, and now Archlinux, which is where I'll stay), with no success.  All I want is the ability to use a single desktop across all three LCD's.  This is what the setup is:

Geforce 7900 GTX
- 1600x1200 LCD
- 1600x1200 LCD
Geforce 8800 GTS 512
- 1920x1200 LCD

I can get everything to work flawlessly as 3 seperate screens.  When I turn on xinerama (and turn off randr, or even leave it on), X starts up, shows the root desktop, then bails.  If I have Gnome installed, it tells me it's unable to find a valid depth, but if I just have the virgin X with nothing extra but the basics installed, it just drops to the console with no error message of any kind.  The Xorg.0.log also shows no errors in either case.  Other WM's vary in the messages they generate as well (I now have a VMWare image with snapshots with most major WM's just so I can easily try and switch between various WM's), but all fail the same way.

Since the screens are on different cards, randr isn't an option.  I have used many combinations of generating the xorg.conf, as well as writing it by hand, and it always ends up the same way.

I am not new to Linux (nor Unix), but I am new to Arch.  It is, finally, the distro I have been looking for for a LONG time.  I wished I had noticed it a long time ago and saved myself a lot of hassle.  Been a Red Hat/Fedora user since the beginning.

Anybody got any ideas?  I can provide the logs and conf's if anyone likes, but I doubt they'll help.  I guess what I am hoping is that someone has seen or heard of this before, because failing that, I think I might be SOL.

One last thing:  I haven't tried this with the NV driver, but I will try that later today just to see if it's only the NVidia driver that's the problem.  I am actually pretty sure it is specific to the NVidia driver, but I haven't verified for _sure_, and I need 3D ability, so the NV driver isn't a long term solution.

squeegee

Member

From: North Plains, OR

Registered: 2009-02-18

Posts: 10

Re: NVida + 7900GTX + 8800 GTS 512 + 3 LCD's - Single Desktop Fail

NV driver doesn't work either.

Also, it appears to be related to GLX.

GGLucas

Member

Registered: 2008-03-13

Posts: 113

Re: NVida + 7900GTX + 8800 GTS 512 + 3 LCD's - Single Desktop Fail

I also had trouble with Xinerama and nVidia, it hasn't been working for me with anything newer than xorg-server 1.4.2, so in the end I switched to using separate X screens, Xinerama was only slowing everything down and has no noticable advantages for my usage.

squeegee

Member

From: North Plains, OR

Registered: 2009-02-18

Posts: 10

Re: NVida + 7900GTX + 8800 GTS 512 + 3 LCD's - Single Desktop Fail

Glad to hear it.  Well, not really - glad to hear I'm not alone in this.  Uh, I think I'll stop before the hole gets deeper...

I've submitted a report to NVidia, but I don't expect I'll hear from them about it since it's not a common problem.

I'm checking into faking the Xinerama extension to see if that can work;  Seems plausible, but who knows.

If only I could find a reliable and easy way to move windows between screens, I'd be able to live with the 3 separate desktops.

Thanks for the confirmation that I'm not going insane!

Ranguvar

Member

Registered: 2008-08-12

Posts: 2,549

Re: NVida + 7900GTX + 8800 GTS 512 + 3 LCD's - Single Desktop Fail

Have you tried TwinView, or a combination of TwinView and Xinerama? There's info on the forums and in NVIDIA's comprehensive driver READMEs.

squeegee

Member

From: North Plains, OR

Registered: 2009-02-18

Posts: 10

Re: NVida + 7900GTX + 8800 GTS 512 + 3 LCD's - Single Desktop Fail

Have you tried TwinView, or a combination of TwinView and Xinerama? There's info on the forums and in NVIDIA's comprehensive driver READMEs.

Yup.  I have it set up so that the 1920x1200 is in the center, and the 1600x1200 are on both sides.  I haven't gotten TwinView to allow it to work that way.  It always requires putting the two 1600x1200 LCD's next to each other (they are both on the G71).

I try to keep the 1920x1200 on the G92 set up for 3D stuff, since the 8800 is the best card I have.