working xorg.conf for dual-head radeon x1300 xt on debian lenny & ubuntu jaunty
 

I spent two days getting my setup to work and swallowed a lot of frustration, I hope to save someone else that time.

I run Debian Lenny with Gnome. My video card is the VisionTek Radeon X1300 XT (AGP 256mb). Has two DVI outs with VGA adapters hooked up to CRT monitors.

lspci reports this card as:
It also reports a second device which I do not know what it's for (maybe the s-video port) and do not use it:
Notes on my xorg.conf:

• No Xinerama. Can drag files & panel items across screens, but cannot drag windows.
• No MergeFB or TwinView.
• Uses the opensource Xorg radeon driver, but I believe any appropriate driver for your card should work.
• I also believe the same style of xorg.conf could be used to acheive the same affect with two video cards instead of dual-head by changing the BusID (to your second card) and Screen (to 0) of "device1".

How to avoid the pitfalls I encountered:

• Using LeftOf or RightOf for positioning screens in the ServerLayout section caused issues with my mouse being stuck on one monitor or able to move to the other then getting stuck there. I had to use absolute positioning to get the mouse to travel properly. There is already bug reports for this and I believe a solution besides my work-around.
• Trying to enable Xinerama causes X to fail to start. Sig 11 crash. I think its probably a software issue and theoretically could be enabled without any other changes to my xorg.conf.
• You MUST have a Device section for each head on your card! They have the same BusId and only differ by their "Screen" parameter. I wasted a bit of time before I read this in the xorg.conf manual pages ("man xorg.conf".)

And here's the gold of this post, my working dual-head, no xinerama, no twinview, no mergefb xorg.conf:

Feel free to pick my brain (however small it is) or suggest changes to my setup for me to try.

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:Pengy: http://www.dabj01.co.cc

Thanks a lot, mate. I managed to dual head working by just following your post. You just saved me a lot of time.
George

even better xorg.conf for this video card
 

I switched from Debian Lenny to Ubuntu Jaunty.

With a little experimentation and use of the System->Appearance->Display tool (in gnome) I now have a better xorg.conf than the one I posted before.

The extra PCI listing is now in use as the second device, also I can now drag windows between screens. I didn't seem to have OpenGL acceleration before which was incredibly slow, but now do.

My new xorg.conf: