Separate X Screens - is this possible with Intel HD Graphics?
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Separate X Screens - is this possible with Intel HD Graphics?
I have searched various Linux forums and have even searched the Xorg mailing list archives. I found a post on the latter which stated that it was not possible. The post was several years old and hopefully out of date.
I have a Dell Inspiron 3050 with Intel HD Graphics. the details are:
Code:
Intel Pentium Processor J2900 (2M Cache, up to 2.67 GHz)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display (rev 0e) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Dell Device 0703
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 91
Memory at d0000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
Memory at c0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
I/O ports at f080 [size=8]
Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: i915
$ /sbin/lspci -nn | grep -i vga
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display [8086:0f31] (rev 0e)
I currently have CentOS 7 installed. I have setup two monitors attached to Separate X Screens on PCs with discrete video cards from Nvidia and ATI. In these cases I used the supplied utility which created the correct xorg.conf file. I have not been able to find any such utility for Intel graphics so I guess I will have to do the deed by hand.
Can anyone tell me IF this is possible and perhaps point me in the right direction towards some documentation or resources to enable me to configure my system?
You can export X to other systems and display your X windows on them so it is certainly possible to have multiple X displays going. However on the server itself you only start X itself once. You can run individual X windows to other systems or use XDMCP to run a full X desktop on each.
What OS is running on the PCs? If it is MS Windows you have to install an X emulator such as Cywin with X11 installed (Cygwin is Linux that runs on top of MS Windows) or a 3rd party product designed for this such as OpenText Exceed (formerly called Hummingbird Exceed). If the PC has Linux installed you should be able to do your X windows on the console of those PCs (assuming you installed X11). You can use ssh tunneling for sending X. Look at the -x and -X options in the ssh man page.
What I am wishing to do is to run two monitors on one PC with dual video outputs. CentOS 7, Ubuntu Mate 15.x or Mint Mate 17.3. I am not that concerned at this point. On my machine with an Nvidia card and Ubuntu Mate I created the following xorg.conf by means of the nvidia-settings tool.
I suspect that I could tweak this xorg.conf if I knew what to put in the Device sections (shown in red). I think I could remove the nvidia related options (shown in green). Any ideas what the appropriate Intel values would be? or where I can find them/
What I am wishing to do is to run two monitors on one PC with dual video outputs.
I don't know if that is possible with an Atom based CPU. But on modern distros you can run a display utility to set dual display mode. It doesn't have to be two separate X screens.
I tweaked the Nvidia xorg.conf and managed to blow up X - but I do have a log file to examine for clues. I will use your input and see what happens. I have installed various distros on machines with Intel graphics. By default I never see an xorg.conf. I do find some default sort of files in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ and /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/.
And thanks whm1974,
Yes, I know I can run two monitors without Separate X Sceens. Both displays can have the same image - useful for a laptop connected to a projector for example - but not much else. Or I can combine the two into a single display. This is in some cases useful - I can open a window on the primary monitor and shove it aside to the secondary monitor. OK for Windoz I guess. However, if I change the workplace on the primary monitor I loose sight of what I placed on the secondary monitor. That is why I use Separate X Screens. So that both monitors act independently.
Yes whm1974, two independent monitors is what I have been using since I first got a dual head machine back in 2009. Ubuntu 9.10 worked, 10.04 did not and I moved to CentOS 6 which has worked fine. I have used two different Nvidia cards - most recently a Quadro K420. I also used a cheap ATI card early on as the original Nvidia card was a little flaky under Ubuntu - after a suspend/resume I would often find all of my programs which were running when I suspended were gone when I resumed.
The Dell Inspiron 3050s are sort of like the Intel NUC DVD box sized micro-micro computers. But they do have two video outputs and I have a surplus of monitors and cables. Monkey see port, monkey will plug something in
You can use xrandr to configure it if it is possible (or arandr, a gui layer for xrandr). I have an hp stream 11 and the HDMI out can have an independent image of what shows on the laptops LCD. I can't really do dual external as it only has one external port. You can Xdmx a few screens with additional computers and networking. Where there's a will there's a way.
Yesterday I managed to hammer out an xorg.conf which did not cause my Mint Mate 17.3 test OS to barf at boot time. It was a combination of the Nvidia sample from my old Pentium 4 machine combined with MensaWater's example. [Sort of like MVS JCL. I only knew 4 people who could code JCL from scratch and only one who would. Everyone else just borrowed an example from some other programmer's library and modified it for their needs.]
Then it was off to the Toyota dealer to have the hand grenade (air bag inflator) replaced in the wife's car. While waiting I read the man page for xorg.conf. It seems rather straight forward except that there is little advice given as far as determining where to get the values to put in the file. Thanks again to MensaWater for his example. I used "intel" as the name of the driver instead of "nvidia".
My file looked good and contained all of the bits and pieces to invoke two separate X screens and assign one to each monitor. EXCEPT THAT IT DID NOT WORK I have one monitor with the panels, menus and desktop icons and the second is just an extension to the right to which I can drag windows.
Applying my normal Piņata approach to IT problem solving - where I put the problem in a bag, hang it from the ceiling and beat it with a stick to see what falls out... I changed the positions of the two screens in xorg.conf so that screen 0 was not to the right of screen 1. I rebooted and found no change. I changed the driver to "roger". The PC booted fine. Seems like it is ignoring xorg.conf(?) Then I added some rude remarks about xorg in the file. This time the PC barfed on bootup and brought up an error message about a syntax error when parsing xorg.conf.
It looks like xorg.conf is being read, parsed, syntax checked and ignored
Thanks Shadow_7,
I had read some about xrandr. I may have to look further into it.
As a final note... On my second one of these little PCs I have Ubuntu Mate 15.10 installed and I run it headless as a low wattage downloading machine. I access it with vncserver or x11vnc if I need access to the login screen/console.
I created accounts for the Three Stooges Moe, Larry and Curly. I setup each one with their own assigned vncserver session number and then launched each one. I am now connected to 4 screens/Deskops on the machine from the Vinagre remote desktop viewer on my CentOS machine.
Perhaps I should just fill one of the video connectors with epoxy and forget about running multi-headed
You can export X to other systems and display your X windows on them so it is certainly possible to have multiple X displays going. However on the server itself you only start X itself once. You can run individual X windows to other systems or use XDMCP to run a full X desktop on each.
For sake of truth, you can run more than on instance of X on the same machine.
For sake of truth, you can run more than on instance of X on the same machine.
If you have a method "for the sake of truth" you might want to share it with the OP as it might help him.
What I was saying is you usually can't run things like startx multiple times as it is more related to the run level starting X for everything. I did say you can have multiple XDMCP sessions or individual X windows to multiple devices but that isn't what the OP is asking about.
OP is better off using xrandr. Running a separate xorg instance is interesting - you can have a different WM/DE for instance, but windows cannot be dragged and dropped into another display. BTW, startx is just a script to run xinit. You can run xinit by hand more than one time.
does the computer with the intel have duel/hybrid graphics cards. If not I don't think you can do it. The nvidia/ati computer has 2 graphic cards with different busid as indicator in your xorg.conf. For the intel computer to work will need the busid of both graphic cards and still may not work depending how the cards are tied together.
What you're asking seems kind of vague. Ultimately, what do you want? Do you want to work with two different displays? That's a piece of cake (see attached), and I use that all the time.
Do you want to have two different workstations (or "seats") from the same PC, using the full multiuser capabilities of Linux? That's a bit trickier, but definitely possible. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MultiseatX
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I have one monitor with the panels, menus and desktop icons and the second is just an extension to the right to which I can drag windows.
