2 wmii instances on dual monitor setup

scv5 · 2009-05-18 14:17:59

Not quite sure what i'm doing wrong here. I want 2 separate instances of wmii running on my dual monitor setup. I'm not concerned about dragging windows from screen to screen, but I am concerned with each x server being able to accept my mouse and keyboard commands.

It seems no matter what I do, my Secondary screen on the right of me can interact fully with my mouse and keyboard, but the primary screen in front of me can only interact with the mouse. Both show seperate instances of wmii, but i can only interact with the one on the right.

The one on the left will not accept any keyboard commands. And while the mouse can be dragged over to that screen, it will not click on 'nil'. Mod+P doesn't work on the primary screen to bring up dmenu, I can't open a terminal there, nothing.

I've created an ~/.xinitrc file and placed the following in it:

DISPLAY=:0.0 wmii &
DISPLAY=:0.1 exec wmii

I've played with it and changed it around a few times:

DISPLAY=:0.0 wmii &
DISPLAY=:0.1 exec wmii &

DISPLAY=:0.0 wmii &
DISPLAY=:0.1 wmii &

but those didn't work either.

Here's the relevant parts of my /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier    "Generic Keyboard"
    Driver        "kbd"
    Option        "XkbRules"    "xorg"
    Option        "XkbModel"    "pc105"
    Option        "XkbLayout"    "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier    "Configured Mouse"
    Driver        "mouse"
    Option        "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier    "0 Matrox Millenium G450 DualHead"
    Driver        "mga"
    BusID        "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen        0
    Option        "DDCMode"        "True"
    Option         "AGPMode"         "4"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier    "1 Matrox Millenium G450 DualHead"
    Driver        "mga"
    BusID        "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen        1
    Option        "DDCMode"        "True"
    Option         "AGPMode"         "4"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier    "Sun"  
    Option        "DPMS"
    HorizSync    30-121
    VertRefresh    48-160
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier    "N9 LCD" 
    Option        "DPMS"
    HorizSync    30-79
    VertRefresh    56-75
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier    "Primary Screen"
    Device        "0 Matrox Millenium G450 DualHead"
    Monitor        "Sun"
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth        16
        Modes        "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth        24
        Modes        "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier    "Secondary Screen"
    Device        "1 Matrox Millenium G450 DualHead"
    Monitor        "N9 LCD"
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth        16
        Modes        "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth        24
        Modes        "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

#Section "ServerLayout"
#    Identifier    "Xinerama Layout"
#    Screen        0 "Primary Screen"
#    Screen        1 "Secondary Screen" RightOf "Primary Screen"
#    InputDevice    "Generic Keyboard"
#    InputDevice    "Configured Mouse"
#    Option        "Xinerama" "True"
#EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Default Layout"
    Screen         0 "Primary Screen" 
    Screen         1 "Secondary Screen" RightOf "Primary Screen"
    InputDevice    "Generic Keyboard"
    InputDevice    "Configured Mouse"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
    Mode    0666
EndSection

Last edited by scv5 (2009-05-18 14:19:43)

sand_man · 2009-05-19 02:09:20

I don't quite know but this may just be a problem with wmii. I know some tiling window managers have "true" dual head support while others don't.

scv5 · 2009-05-19 02:44:49

supposedly 3.6-1 does not have great Xinerama support. I tried at work, and it seems applications will stretch from screen to screen.

But I'm not doing this the Xinerama way. I even have attempted getting the latest and greatest from here, which does have Xinerama support: http://code.suckless.org/hg/wmii but it won't build for me... and in the end, it's still not the solution i'm after.

I know this can be done as I've seen screenshots and various other displays of wmii doing 2 seperate instances. I also got the idea from a how-to off a mailing list from someone who did this a while ago, but I just can't seem to get it to work.

harpo · 2009-05-19 05:08:31

It's a wmii bug. You have to start a client on the 'broken' display before it will accept input.

Assuming you can type in display 0, but not display 1, do this in a terminal on display 0:

DISPLAY=:0.1 xterm &

You should now be able to interact with display 1. Or vice versa, depending on which works.
Now you can put something like that in your xinitrc.

I think the bug is in tag handling (tag doesn't really exist until it has a client).

scv5 · 2009-05-19 12:42:58

odd, doing what you said does allow me to interact with the other screen. Unfortunately, I can only interact with wmii itself (Mod+P, tagging, etc..) on the screen that i couldn't before. It just reverses the problem. If I open what I need to on Display 0.0 (which is the one that works initially), then force xterm to open on Display 0.1, I can interact with apps on each, but only wmii on 0.1

Last edited by scv5 (2009-05-19 12:46:07)

harpo · 2009-05-20 15:13:01

Hmmm, that seems a little strange. All I can do is let you know my working settings so you have a baseline.

Here's a minimal working xinitrc:

  DISPLAY=:0.1 wmii -r ${HOME}/etc/wmii/wmiirc &
  exec wmii -r ${HOME}/etc/wmii/wmiirc

And here's the relevant parts of my xorg.conf:

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 1280 0
    Screen      1  "Screen1" LeftOf "Screen0"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load           "dbe"
    Load           "extmod"
    Load           "type1"
    Load           "freetype"
    Load           "glx"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option         "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

...

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinView" "0"
    Option         "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "CRT-0"
    Option         "metamodes" "CRT-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen1"
    Device         "Device1"
    Monitor        "Monitor1"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinView" "0"
    Option         "metamodes" "CRT-1: 1280x1024 +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Last edited by harpo (2009-05-20 15:18:55)

filam · 2009-07-29 19:32:14

Thankfully harpo's solution worked for me. Is there a keybinding that will switch between DISPLAY 0.0 and 0.1?

jordi · 2009-07-30 18:39:31

You could try wmii-hg from AUR

it works quite well when using dual-screen set up with xrandr

Arch Linux

#1 2009-05-18 14:17:59

2 wmii instances on dual monitor setup

#2 2009-05-19 02:09:20

Re: 2 wmii instances on dual monitor setup

#3 2009-05-19 02:44:49

Re: 2 wmii instances on dual monitor setup

#4 2009-05-19 05:08:31

Re: 2 wmii instances on dual monitor setup

#5 2009-05-19 12:42:58

Re: 2 wmii instances on dual monitor setup

#6 2009-05-20 15:13:01

Re: 2 wmii instances on dual monitor setup

#7 2009-07-29 19:32:14

Re: 2 wmii instances on dual monitor setup

#8 2009-07-30 18:39:31

Re: 2 wmii instances on dual monitor setup

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