Hi Folks,

I currently have two video cards installed on my machine. Only one of them have 3D acceleration (it is a Nvidia Quadro FX 5600), the other one is a very simple card. I only have one monitor, in which I use the plain simple video card. The Nvidia card should be dedicated to process remote X sessions through VNC and VirtualGL.

Well, my problem is quite simple, when I start VNC server, how can I state which video card it is supposed to use? It seems to me that it is always using the plain simple video card, while I would like it to use the NVidia one. Any suggestions?

Below you can see my current xorg.conf. Monitor1 does not exist, it is configured in xorg.conf just because I don't know any other way of doing it.

Thanks in advance!

Cheers,

Rafael



Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout0"
Screen 0 "Screen0"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
FontPath "unix/:7100"
EndSection

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

Section "InputDevice"
# generated from data in "/etc/sysconfig/mouse"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
# generated from data in "/etc/sysconfig/keyboard"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "Unknown"
HorizSync 30.0 - 110.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 150.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor1"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "Unknown"
HorizSync 30.0 - 110.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 150.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection


Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "ast"
VendorName "AST2000"
# BusID "1:5:0"
EndSection


Section "Device"
Identifier "Device1"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
BusID "PCI:137:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes 800x600
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen1"
Device "Device1"
Monitor "Monitor1"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes 1024x768
EndSubSection
EndSection

You need to have the remote application's virtualgl use a different screen (on the remote server) than the one normally used. You need a "Device" section for each card. Each "Device" section needs a "BusID" entry.

You also need two "Screen" sections with Device entries for the respective cards. You have done this already.

You also need two "Screen" entries in your "Server Layout" section. This you don't have.

I don't know the details on how you indicate which remote screen that virtualGL will use at the remote application server. Normally the x-server on your local client computer will provide the display. You will need to find the answer in the virtualGL documentation.

---
The application servers xorg.conf file can have more than one "Server Layout" section. You might try starting an X instance using the -layout <layout identifier> option. Then the default layout doesn't need and entry for the second screen.
---
You may make life easier if you simply use the better video card.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thank you for your help!

In fact, I can't just forget about the simpler video card. I am dealing here with a Sun Fire X4440 server. The simpler video card is an onboard hardware that is used by its ILOM (an web remote management interface), so that I am able to remotely configure the server.

This server also has two Quadro FX 5600 PCI express video cards with 2 GPUs each. That means that I have 4 GPUs to configure and I should be able to start a remote session using VNC (and VirtualGL) on any of these GPUs (there should be a device configuration for each of them, as well as screen and screen layout as far as I understood).

So, my problem can not be simplified by removing the simpler video card... Just forgetting about VirtualGL for a moment, I would like to know how can I tell VNC server to start an X session using a given ServerLayout. I really didn't get this yet!

Cheers,

Rafael

There is a -layout option to start X using the "Server Layout" with a certain ServerLayout identity. I don't know if that can be used for VNC however.

Can you login graphically and start the X server manually?