Only Primary Device of two is activating

TimBlo · 2016-06-01 12:49:26

Hi

I'm totally happy with my new OS but I got into this problem and haven't yet been able to find the correct solution.

First of, about what i want to use: (devices)

$ lspci | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Cayman PRO [Radeon HD 6950]
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Cayman PRO [Radeon HD 6950]

That output looks just fine. They have a Dual-Link DVI, a "weaker" DVI (also offering less resolution caps), a HDMI and two DPs.
I use the primary with two DVI monitors and the secondary would be VGA over DVI and DVI.
Afaik, they would not manage more than 2 outs per device anyways and this setup works with windows (haven't been testing others) and would probably as well with X.
I rarely used Crossfire and it's not the goal of that setup. (even though the cfx cables are mounted - it's been disabled for most of time {and still is})

When startxing, all monitors activate shortly but the desktop (awesome WM) is limited to the out's of the primary device and the other two monitors are disabling immediately.

It's been said that using xorg.conf is not (longer) the way to go and when i tried, all that changes is the other two monitors remaining active, showing some cursor when on it but no floating windows or anything.
Also, it reduced to this

$ xrandr --listproviders
Providers: number : 1
Provider 0: id: 0x5a cap: 0xf, Source Output, Sink Output, Source Offload, Sink Offload crtcs: 6 outputs: 5 associated providers: 0 name:AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series @ pci:0000:01:00.0

what is probably incorrect as well. It's listing 2 providers with no / default config.
I think this changed in the first line as well because of the config:

$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 4240 x 1600, maximum 16384 x 16384
DisplayPort-0 disconnected primary (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DisplayPort-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-0 connected 1680x1050+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 434mm x 270mm
   1680x1050     59.88*+
   1600x1200     60.00  
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02  
   1440x900      74.98    59.90  
   1280x960      60.00  
   1152x864      75.00  
   1280x720      60.00  
   1024x768      75.08    70.07    60.00  
   832x624       74.55  
   800x600       72.19    75.00    60.32    56.25  
   640x480       75.00    72.81    66.67    60.00  
   720x400       70.08  
DVI-1 connected 2560x1600+1680+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 641mm x 401mm
   2560x1600     59.97*+
   1920x1440     60.00  
   1920x1200     59.95  
   1600x1200     60.00  
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02  
   1280x800      59.91  
   1152x864      75.00  
   1024x768      75.08    60.00  
   800x600       75.00    60.32  
   640x480       75.00    60.00  
   720x400       70.08

This is the configuration that's tried for X: (modified from "X :1 -configure")

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "X.org Configured - Tim Extended"
	Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
	Screen      1  "Screen1" RightOf "Screen0"
	Screen      2  "Screen2" RightOf "Screen1"
	Screen      3  "Screen3" RightOf "Screen2"
	InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
	InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
	ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/TTF/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/OTF/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/"
EndSection

Section "Module"
	Load  "glx"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Keyboard0"
	Driver      "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Mouse0"
	Driver      "mouse"
	Option	    "Protocol" "auto"
	Option	    "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
	Option	    "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "Monitor0"
	VendorName   "DELL Monitor"
	ModelName    "Good Monitor Model"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "Monitor1"
	VendorName   "Philips Monitor"
	ModelName    "220AW"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "Monitor2"
	VendorName   "Samsung Monitor"
	ModelName    "SyncMaster 2443"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "Monitor3"
	VendorName   "Acer Monitor"
	ModelName    "AL1916W"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "Card0"
	Driver      "radeon"
	BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "Card1"
	Driver      "radeon"
	BusID       "PCI:2:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen0"
	Device     "Card0"
	Monitor    "Monitor0"
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     32
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen1"
	Device     "Card0"
	Monitor    "Monitor1"
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     32
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen2"
	Device     "Card1"
	Monitor    "Monitor2"
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     32
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen3"
	Device     "Card1"
	Monitor    "Monitor3"
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     32
	EndSubSection
EndSection

I think I should be able to fully configure everything with randr and it could be that I missmatched somewhere during setup of the entire installation. However, everthing else works [as good as i configured].

I hope someone can fix it up
I look forward for your replies.

Lone_Wolf · 2016-06-01 20:17:59

Your system is probably using a hybrid graphics setup, see the PRIME archwiki page for details.

The 'xrandr --listproviders' line showing 2 providers is exactly what you expectto see in such a setup (and one of them IS default , default just doesn't occur in the xrandr output)

TimBlo · 2016-06-02 09:06:22

Thanks

Badly PRIME won't work (I secially looked at reverse prime - but have been testing all around with all options). But that's pobably no wonder because, as I say

Afaik, they would not manage more than 2 outs per device anyways

This applies under Windows and is expectable as they are ~5 years old and which is why I just bought the two of them back then (I supposed having less problems if they are idetical. lol). So I hadn't been able to enable any further output even though PRIME settings (whose crash X when resetting and even render tty buggy) offer all but one outputs (it's adding names like DVI-1-1).

Also xrandr only lists the outputs of the (default) primary card [see xrandr output above], sees the second (listproviders) but none of its outputs [with defaults].
I did not yet test the ZaphodHeads option with a config, but I can try it later.
Further I'm testing with radeon and thus could give catalyst a try... And I wonder if I could run the second card with fbdev or vesa to get both up and the option to use all 4 monitors. One card with "3D power" is easily enough but I want to "see more" .

Btw. when using the config file like the one above, the 2 empty screens become recordable with OBS (had to test around with it). Maybe somewhere in the middle between X and awesome WM is something getting lost?

I'll report here if both cards are getting active under Arch & X ( & awesome). Would it be worth a try to use a different WM?

------------------------------------

vesa seems not to work at all and fbdev is limited to 1 output.
in my opinion nothing of this makes sense as all drivers should load an instance for each card or even each (active) output. (i'd guess they even actually do, but what would be the problem then?)

------------------------------------

The Catalyst driver is producing segmentation faults - Useless in my case.
[A note about dropping support for most of my card's series appeared AFTER installing. couldn't have been seeing that on ATI's page. Also my card is 3rd last in it's series.]

I could check if radeon could use the second card with an extra xorg-server, but even if it works it would remain beeing a poor solution.
That's pretty bad because I really started to like this distro all in all. If I drop it, I'll get back to it as soon as I replaced this old graphics setup - for sure. Maybe I'm gonna try other distros just to see wheter they can run this hardware usefully.

------------------------------------

Ubuntu (16) won't work either with both cards and it's provided display management is not even starting. It's setting some weird (hybrid / reverse prime) config, what results in xrandr beeing reporting THREE of the two cards i have.
I'm going to see whose of my 'backup cards' fit on my mainboard to check for 'new ways'
I've three of them, so with a bit luck it works fine :>

------------------------------------

I installed an old card taht works fine (on windumb at least) but i only got it up with reverse prime and it made the cursor freezing almost each second.
I'd hope i'm doing literally everything wrong but i tried dozens of times and hadn't even been near to what i want.
I'll keep upgrading the system and try somewhat every now and then but i except a new single card setup will do it finally.

I think it should work because i got the cards at least to enable the screens rendering them entirely black

Last edited by TimBlo (2016-06-16 22:32:02)

Arch Linux

#1 2016-06-01 12:49:26

Only Primary Device of two is activating

#2 2016-06-01 20:17:59

Re: Only Primary Device of two is activating

#3 2016-06-02 09:06:22

Re: Only Primary Device of two is activating

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