After scouring previous posts, I ended up deciding I didn't want to use xinerama for my dual head setup. So I set about doing otherwise. I used the XF86Config kindly supplied by kewpie and here is what I have so far:

AGP Nvidia GeForce 2MX 400 64MB on a Dell Ultrascan 19"
PCI S3 Trio 32/64 on an Iiyama VisionMaster 350 MF8515G.

Up to now, I can start X on only one monitor at once by using the commands: startx -- -layout s3 or startx -- -layout geforce. But when I run startx -- -layout both, both monitors seem to load with X, but a few seconds later the whole system freezes, requiring a reboot.

Any ideas anyone?

Thanks.

Regards.

Wolverine

well, glad you got that far! All i can suggest is that you try swapping round the initialisation orders and such. i.e. A LeftOf B instead of B RightOf A, yeah? i HAVE to load the pci card before my AGP, which is also the default card in the bios. I'm not sure what part causes that requirement, maybe it's cos the AGP is already on, maybe it's just cos it's better or something, but it will not work the other way round. mine jjust crashes X though, and falls back to terminal, so it's not quite the same problem. That's the only problem i ever really had though, so is all i can sugest, just try and think of different waysd of doing things, and as make sure you've only taken the principles and stuff from my configuration, not anything concrete... if you have, that might be what's giving the grief.

Thanks for the reply Kewpie. I'll try swapping some things over in the config file. I have the same problem when booting from the AGP slot as when booting from the PCI slot.

Thanks again....


Wolverine

--Update-- Another thing I found strange.... I obtained the PCI BusID of the display cards using /sbin/lspci. The GeForce worked fine, but the S3 didn't. It took me a while to solve it. I ended up running XFree86 -configure to auto create a config file which somehow detected over 50 monitors one running off the GeForce, the rest running off the S3, there was a load of S3 card detected too, each with a different BusId. So I picked the first S3 card's BusId and used that in my config file and that's how I got the 2nd display working. Since then, I've tried different BusIds but am still getting nowhere with getting both monitors running at the same time....

Another finding here.....

While the whole box seems to lock up, I can still ssh into it from my server, a simple ps -aux reveals that the process: /usr/X11R6/bin/X :0 -layout both is using up 96.3% cpu usage. Any ideas on this one?

Regards.

Wolverine

--Update--

Ok, last one before I fall to sleep. I sshed into the box and set up a tail on /var/log/messages and /var/log/XFree86.0.log then ran startx -- -layout both. Here are the results up to the time of freeze. (/var/log/XFree86.0.log is huge so I'll pop it up on my webserver tomorrow if needs be)

/var/log/messages:

Jul 9 00:39:58 localhost kernel: spurious 8259A interrupt: IRQ7.
Jul 9 00:40:04 localhost kernel: es1371: version v0.30 time 15:56:26 Jun 10 2002
Jul 9 00:40:04 localhost kernel: PCI: Found IRQ 10 for device 00:0d.0
Jul 9 00:40:04 localhost kernel: PCI: Sharing IRQ 10 with 00:0f.0
Jul 9 00:40:04 localhost kernel: es1371: found chip, vendor id 0x1274 device id 0x1371 revision 0x06
Jul 9 00:40:04 localhost kernel: es1371: found es1371 rev 6 at io 0xcc00 irq 10
Jul 9 00:40:04 localhost kernel: es1371: features: joystick 0x0
Jul 9 00:40:04 localhost kernel: ac97_codec: AC97 Audio codec, id: 0x8384:0x7609 (SigmaTel STAC9721/23)
Jul 9 00:40:04 localhost modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module sound-service-0-0
Jul 9 00:40:04 localhost modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module sound-slot-1
Jul 9 00:40:04 localhost modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module sound-service-1-0
Jul 9 00:40:04 localhost modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module sound-slot-1
Jul 9 00:40:04 localhost modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module sound-service-1-0

Regards.

Wolverine