Need help configuring dual monitors [SuSE 9.3]

gogogadgetearl · 10-02-2005, 10:22 PM

Yes, I am a newbie, but I learn quick and I thought this topic was a little beyond the newbie forum.

I have two BenQ-FP737s LCD monitors hooked up to a nVidia GeForce 5900XT (1-DVI, 1-VGA). At one point, I had SuSE 9.2 installed and the card/monitors configured to properly use both monitors for my desk space. Recently, I've deleted the SuSE 9.2 partition, formatted it, and installed SuSE 9.3. I would now like to configure 9.3 to extend my desktop across both monitors. Unfortunately, it has been a while since I configured these devices in 9.2, and, in the mean time, I haven't had much opportunity to tinker with or learn much about Linux -- so I have no idea what I did.

One new thing to throw in the mixture: last time (SuSE 9.2), before I started configuring my dual monitors, the display was cloned - the same picture was on each monitor. This time, my secondary monitor (connected to the VGA-out) has a terribly corrupted-looking display. Picture this: take the top-left quadrant of my main screen (DVI-out), overlay the top-right of my main screen, give it tie-dyed colors and Matrix-esque monitor interference, and that is what you see on my secondary monitor. Assuming that it was a fluke, and that properly configuring X to utilize the secondary monitor would fix the situation, I ignored it and attempted to figure out how to configure dual monitors.

The Googling that I've done:
>>dual monitors linux
>>linux twinview
>>linux twinview how-to

That last Google search produced this page: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Dual_Monitors#TwinView -- which I know I used last time to configure my dual monitors properly. [I know, I'm not using Gentoo, but it worked last time.] This time, however, it didn't work so well...or at all for that matter. I still get the same corrupted display on my secondary monitor.

I'm now wondering if the corrupted display is the result of a problem I didn't have before. I know it's not hardware, both displays work fine in WinXP.

Things I've considered:
>>Do I have corrupted drivers for my graphics card or my monitor? (I've tried updating/reinstalling the drivers for both.)
>>Do I need to enable VGA-out on my graphics card?
>>Do I need to add a 2nd monitor in YaST2 (or in xorg.conf)?
>>Is TwinView really the best way to extend my desktop or is there a better, more up-to-date method?
>>I would think there would be a easier way to set this up (thru YaST2 or SaX2), but when I try and set up multihead, it tells me is that my system doesn't provide more than one graphics mode.

Can somebody point me in the right direction?

gogogadgetearl · 10-03-2005, 06:00 PM

No ideas?

scrooge · 10-11-2005, 12:56 PM

If you have the nVidia drivers installed you can modify your xorg.conf or XFree86.conf placed in /etc/X11/.
You can read the README.txt file on www.nvidia.com (that's what it's there for

) and look at appendix G: Configuring Twinview.
Here are also my configurations, I thought it might be helpful.

Code:

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "NVIDIA Corporation NV40? [Unknown nVidia Card]"
        Driver          "nvidia"
        BusID           "PCI:1:0:0"
        Option          "TwinView"
        Option          "TwinViewOrientation" "RightOf"
        Option          "MetaModes"     "1600x1200 +0+0, 1280x1024 +1600+176; 1280x960, 1280x960; 1600x1200; 1280x960; 1024x768; 800x600; 720x350; 640x480"
        Option          "SecondMonitorHorizSync"        "30 - 96.0"
        Option          "SecondMonitorVertRefresh"      "50 - 120"
EndSection

It should be rather obvious what each line does, but I had a lot of trouble with the MetaModes options (or getting it to work like I wanted it to work) so I'll add some lines about that.
When I first configured X to use TwinView I only had one option in MetaModes: 1280x1280. I then puzzled me why everything I ran in fullscreen was split between the screens, half on the right one and half on the left with a large black area around. But I found out why X behaved like that when I added the other resolutions that specify only one of the screens (1600x1200; 1280x960; 1024x768; 800x600; 720x350; 640x480), because to use a resolution (e.g. fullscreen 640x480) you have to configure X to be able to swich to it.

I hope this helps.

gogogadgetearl · 10-11-2005, 01:18 PM

thanks scrooge. i installed the nvidia drivers and changed 'Driver' in xorg.conf from "nv" to "nvidia". then all the other TwinView settings i had previously made worked perfectly.