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X dual head, one graphic card

Posted 10-25-2010 at 10:48 AM by serafean
Updated 11-04-2010 at 04:20 PM by serafean

X configuration

Goal : 2 separate X screens working as dual-head(like 2 mice, 2 keyboards), powered by one graphic card(nvidia ion, 1st gen).

features used :

X multiple screens (Zaphod mode?)
MPX (multiple input X)

First configure the X server through xorg.conf :

Code:

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Monitor"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 1500 0
    Screen      1  "Screen1" 0 0  #LeftOf "Screen0"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    Option         "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

Screen 0 is placed X coordinates 1500 to prevent the pointer from going from one screen to the other (Screen 1 X size is 1360).
Xinerama disabled... this should be self explanatory.

For each screen, there has to be a relevant screen section, monitor section, and device section (yes, 2 device sections, even for just
one physical device). the whole xorg.conf is attached. I do admit, that most of this xorg.conf was generated by nvidia-settings.

Now X is running, 2 separate screens. one with KDE running, to run anything, it needs to be run from console with the DISPLAY variable set to :0.1 .

Now to set up MPX : first create a new master pointer device (in this case named enna) and get its ID :

Code:

$xinput create-master enna
$xinput list
âŽ¡ Virtual core pointer                    	id=2	[master pointer  (3)]
âŽœ   â†³ Virtual core XTEST pointer              	id=4	[slave  pointer  (2)]
âŽœ   â†³ Logitech Optical USB Mouse              	id=6	[slave  pointer  (2)]
âŽœ   â†³ iMON Remote (15c2:0039)                 	id=7	[slave  pointer  (2)]
âŽ£ Virtual core keyboard                   	id=3	[master keyboard (2)]
    â†³ Virtual core XTEST keyboard             	id=5	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    â†³ Logitech USB Receiver                   	id=8	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    â†³ Logitech USB Receiver                   	id=9	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    â†³ Power Button                            	id=10	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    â†³ Power Button                            	id=11	[slave  keyboard (3)]
âŽ¡ enna pointer                            	id=12	[master pointer  (13)]
âŽœ   â†³ enna XTEST pointer                      	id=14	[slave  pointer  (12)]
âŽ£ enna keyboard                           	id=13	[master keyboard (12)]
    â†³ enna XTEST keyboard                     	id=15	[slave  keyboard (13)]
$xinput reattach 7 12

the last command attaches input from the imon IR receiver to the "enna" pointer. (sory for the weird symbols, I have an encoding problem that is yet to be solved)
Now we have to move the "enna" pointer from screen 0 to screen 1. I havent yet found a nice way to do this, so I hacked together a piece of C code to do just that :

Code:

#include <X11/extensions/XInput2.h>

int main(){
  Display *XSession = XOpenDisplay(NULL);
  int OriginScreen = 0;
  int pID = 12;
  int opcode,event,error;
  if (!XQueryExtension(XSession,"XInputExtension", &opcode, &event,&error)){
    printf("X Input extension not available");
    return -1;
}

  XIWarpPointer(XSession, pID, None, RootWindow(XSession,
1), 0,0,0,0,0,0);

  XCloseDisplay(XSession);
}

Compile using `gcc -lXi -o movepointer`

an voilà, pointer focus from the iMon is on the second screen, which acts as a second head. For now all this is done through a script run by kdm when it starts. I'll attach it later (after I make it find the device ID, not having everything statically), along with cleaner C code.

TODO : still haven't found a way to stop kdm/kde from resetting the X server (thus killing the media center on the second screen) upon logout.

Credit for the C code goes to mostly to David Mohr who's code I copied, and kept stripping till it did exactly what I wanted.

X dual head, one graphic card

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