Arch Linux

Maximalminimalist

Member

Registered: 2009-09-20

Posts: 112

[Solved] no signal w/ second monitor and dual screen using nouveau, i3

Hi!

I just brought my old screen to my room and try to make it work. It works when the other one is not connected, so no hardware problems. The result is that I can go to the right and do stuff and move the window to my working screen, but the monitor stays black and says "no signal". I tried a long time with nouveau but without success. I was not able to make the graphic card work with the propretary driver from the website and I don't want to downgrade the xorg-server to 1.12 to install nvidia-96xx...

%lspci | grep VGA                                                                           [0]
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G94 [GeForce 9600 GT] (rev a1)

%xrandr                                                                                     [0]
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 3200 x 1200, maximum 8192 x 8192
DVI-I-1 connected 1920x1200+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 518mm x 324mm
   1920x1200      60.0*+
   1920x1080      60.0  
   1600x1200      60.0  
   1680x1050      59.9  
   1280x1024      60.0  
   1280x960       60.0  
   1024x768       60.0  
   800x600        60.3  
   640x480        60.0  
   720x400        70.1  
DVI-I-2 connected 1280x1024+1920+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 376mm x 301mm
   1280x1024      60.0*+   75.0  
   1280x960       60.0  
   1152x864       75.0  
   1024x768       75.1     70.1     60.0  
   832x624        74.6  
   800x600        72.2     75.0     60.3     56.2  
   640x480        75.0     72.8     66.7     60.0  
   720x400        70.1  

%cat .i3/config
### ommitted lines
# Multi-monitor setup
workspace 1 output DVI-I-1
workspace 2 output DVI-I-1
workspace 3 output DVI-I-1
workspace 4 output DVI-I-1
workspace 5 output DVI-I-2
workspace 6 output DVI-I-2
workspace 7 output DVI-I-2
workspace 8 output DVI-I-2
workspace 9 output DVI-I-2
workspace 0 output DVI-I-1
### ommitted lines

How I connect it:

%xrandr --output DVI-I-2 --right-of DVI-I-1

nl /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nouveau.conf                                                    [1]
     1	# the left one
     2	Section "Monitor"
     3	          Identifier   "DELL"
     4	          Option "PreferredMode" "1920x1200_60.00"
     5	EndSection
       
     6	# the right one
     7	Section "Monitor"
     8	          Identifier   "NEC"
     9	          Option "PreferredMode" "1280x1024_60.00"
    10	          Option "RightOf" "DELL"
    11	EndSection
       
       
    12	Section "Device"
    13	    Identifier "nvidia card"
    14	    Driver "nouveau"
    15	    Option  "Monitor-DVI-I-1" "DELL"
    16	    Option  "Monitor-DVI-I-2" "NEC"
    17	EndSection
       
    18	Section "Screen"
    19	    Identifier "screen1"
    20	   Monitor "NEC"
    21	    DefaultDepth 24
    22	      SubSection "Display"
    23	       Depth      24
    24	       Virtual 3200 2224
    25	      EndSubSection
    26	    Device "nvidia card"
    27	EndSection
       
    28	Section "ServerLayout"
    29	    Identifier "layout1"
    30	    Screen "screen1"
    31	EndSection

I don't know what I should try. I haven't tried yet the "old-school" Xinerama stuff, but it seems tedious and error-prone...unless someone tells me that it is actually a different and possibly working approach I'm not going to try it. Any hint is welcome! :-)

Best,
Marc

Last edited by Maximalminimalist (2013-11-20 09:57:44)

LyCC

Member

Registered: 2012-09-05

Posts: 174

Re: [Solved] no signal w/ second monitor and dual screen using nouveau, i3

Hi, the latest proprietary driver should support your card. I have a 9800GT and it's supported *, so ... anyway, maybe you can disable the intel IGP and only use the 9600 card for both monitors? - you are not on a notebook right?

* http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverRe … 9372/en-us
all the 9xxx series is supported.
PS: you don't need to download the driver from nvidia's site, you can use what's in the repo.

Last edited by LyCC (2013-11-19 17:08:12)

Maximalminimalist

Member

Registered: 2009-09-20

Posts: 112

Re: [Solved] no signal w/ second monitor and dual screen using nouveau, i3

Hi!

Thanks for pointing out the repo..I did yaourt -Ss nvidia from the beginning and I didn't pay attention to the nvidia package. Sometimes archlinux is more user-friendly than one expects...

So now my second monitor works. :-)

Moral of the story:
If you want to use the NVIDIA driver, read
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Nvidia

And if it doesn't work, read
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Nvidia
again, because maybe you missed something...

Best,
Marc