Mandriva 2009 and hp Compaq nc6120

Xolo · 05-07-2009, 09:37 AM

Hello.

I'm looking to extend the desktop of my hp Compaq nc6120 notebook with an external monitor under Mandriva 2009.
A little looking around reveals a commonly used piece of software is 'Xinerama', which also appears to be installed, but the most I can get out of the usual ways of configuring the display via the supplied tools in Mandriva is cloned output on the same resolution as the notebook's own display.
There appears to be no way to reconfigure for extended desktop via the GUI.

So my questions are; how do I (properly):

1. Have an extended desktop
2. Have notebook as primary on 1024x768, and TFT as secondary on 1280x1024
3. Enable the 'fn+F4' display output toggle (as this doesn't work at all)
4. Not have to redo configuring this every resume/reboot if I swap monitors

Thank you for any input.

camorri · 05-09-2009, 05:28 AM

You didn't say what video hardware you have. You do need a card, chipset that supports two monitors. Compaq sell a lot of systems with Nvidia hardware.

Here is a link that may get you started in the right direction. Basically you edit your xorg.conf file. Make a backup first. If you much up xorg too much you may get yourself to a point where xorg won't start, there fore, BACKUP first.

The link-->http://mandrivausers.org/index.php?s...monitors++dual

Hope this helps.

Xolo · 05-09-2009, 07:31 PM

Sorry for not including it earlier as I (apparently wrongly) figured something more general to Xinerama would be available, being seemingly separate to Xorg.
Being a notebook it has multiple video out capabilities; internal VGA TFT, external VGA, external S-Video via a proprietary DIN plug, that can be active one at a time, two at a time, or all three at a time via a keyboard hotkey combination. So i'm not worried about the video out capabilities there, it's also quite capable of using them as desired under Windows.. but that's not my OS of choice.

The integrated chipset is an Intel 915GM Express with up to 128MB shared RAM.
I already have issues with Compiz Fusion and KDE on Mandriva 2009 regarding broken/missing GUI configuration options, so yes i'll be backing up the Xorg config file before I start picking it apart.
Besides I figure with Mandriva 2009.1 being out now, I might just prepare for a wipe and re-install anyway just for the heck of having a clean install

Thanks for the link! i'll have a read tomorrow when i'm more awake (2:30am right now)

michaelk · 05-09-2009, 10:08 PM

To configure an external monitor you can use the xrandr command.
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Xorg_RandR_1.2

Xolo · 05-15-2009, 01:47 AM

Well, i'm back and i've got my clean Mandriva 2009.1 install now.
Kinda forced it's way to that position, my first intention was to test on what I already had so I could transport that into a clean install, but it wasn't meant to be: the upgrade feature failed miserably this time. After getting the updates, and then proceeding into upgrade, aria2 failed to resolve a dependancy for 'libkorganizer.so.1' after which the upgrade got stuck in an endless loop re-downloading the 4GB+ worth of packages. Rebooting resulted in a kernel panic. Oh well. Made a good backup anyway.

Anyway, 2009.1 does look very nice, and this time everything (except, again, the Fn+Screen key combination for external VGA..) just works which is excellent, and makes up for 2009.0's failures in that department.
But why is it so slooooowww? X often eats up 70% cpu, I seem to have two rsync processes regularly popping up simultaneously eating 20~25% cpu each, draksnapshot eats up another 50~60% whenever it feels like it, kio is terribly slow with file copying and causes the whole system to drag, and Firefox eats a whole 10% more cpu overall. Worse yet, enabling Compiz Fusion makes it now slow beyond being usable, and the window decorations completely disappear when maximising something.
I read about 2009.1 being much cleaner and faster, but out of the box.. for me it isn't

Guess this is my new testbed? i'll get on with the links you provided me to get dual head working and see about getting into Mandriva's bugzilla to report these failures.

Xolo · 05-29-2009, 08:26 AM

Alright, had a short moment to have a proper read of the xrandr page.
I've stumbled over this:

Code:

[root@BOFH1 Mandriva]# xrandr --output LVDS --mode 1024x768 --pos 0x0 --output VGA  --mode 1280x1024 --pos 1024x0
xrandr: screen cannot be larger than 1280x1280 (desired size 2304x1024)

Which was mentioned that such an error most likely would happen, and the remedy was to add a suitable size to the 'Virtual' portion of the display.

My xorg.conf before changes:

Code:

# File generated by XFdrake (rev 256990)

# **********************************************************************
# Refer to the xorg.conf man page for details about the format of
# this file.
# **********************************************************************

Section "ServerFlags"
    #DontZap # disable <Ctrl><Alt><BS> (server abort)
    AllowMouseOpenFail # allows the server to start up even if the mouse does not work
    #DontZoom # disable <Ctrl><Alt><KP_+>/<KP_-> (resolution switching)
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load "dbe" # Double-Buffering Extension
    Load "v4l" # Video for Linux
    Load "extmod"
    Load "glx" # 3D layer
    Load "dri" # direct rendering
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "Keyboard1"
    Driver "kbd"
    Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
    Option "XkbLayout" "us(alt-intl)"
    Option "XkbOptions" "compose:rwin"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "Mouse1"
    Driver "mouse"
    Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
    Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "Mouse2"
    Driver "evdev"
    Option "device" "/dev/input/by-id/usb-Logitech_USB_Receiver-event-mouse"
    Option "HWheelRelativeAxisButtons" "7 6"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "SynapticsMouse1"
    Driver "synaptics"
    Option "SHMConfig" "on"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "monitor1"
    VendorName "Plug'n Play"
    
    # TV fullscreen mode or DVD fullscreen output.
    # 768x576 @ 79 Hz, 50 kHz hsync
    ModeLine "768x576"     50.00  768  832  846 1000   576  590  595  630
    
    # 768x576 @ 100 Hz, 61.6 kHz hsync
    ModeLine "768x576"     63.07  768  800  960 1024   576  578  590  616
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "device1"
    BoardName "Intel 810"
    Driver "i810"
    Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "screen1"
    Device "device1"
    Monitor "monitor1"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "layout1"
    InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice "Mouse2" "SendCoreEvents"
    InputDevice "SynapticsMouse1" "SendCoreEvents"
    Screen "screen1"
EndSection

Going to venture a guess here and say that 'Screen' down in the file is the external display on the VGA port.
As you can see, neither have any resolutions or modes defined, which seems rather odd at least for the built-in TFT panel.
I suspect it will give me problems like that but i'll just see what happens, have a copy of the xorg.conf anyway.

While poking around with the monitor I also tried to resolve the non-performance of Compiz. Somewhere I read that 'i810 and later' is not the correct setting for the chipset I run, and that 'i810' is.
Changed that over to i810, forced to log out, black screen with cursor.. XFdrake via another tty to fix it, rebooted, ntpd broke and blocked booting until I unplugged the ethernet cable. No clue why ntpd broke when I changed video drivers, but it wouldn't stop attempting to contact a time server.
Anyway, using i810 at the moment, but it sadly didn't change anything about Compiz. Still behaves just as horrid in Mandriva 2009.1, on top of that I also discovered Compiz completely ruins the keyboard shortcut setup by mis-mapping a whole lot of keys to do things they shouldn't.
So no more Compiz for Mandriva 2009.1, it's too broken and i've got more to do today.

I'll report back when i'm done testing settings in xorg.conf.

Xolo · 05-29-2009, 09:20 AM

Right, got rudimentary something working. Here's the resulting xorg.conf i'm currently running:

Code:

# File generated by XFdrake (rev 256990)

# **********************************************************************
# Refer to the xorg.conf man page for details about the format of
# this file.
# **********************************************************************

Section "ServerFlags"
    #DontZap # disable <Ctrl><Alt><BS> (server abort)
    AllowMouseOpenFail # allows the server to start up even if the mouse does not work
    #DontZoom # disable <Ctrl><Alt><KP_+>/<KP_-> (resolution switching)
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load "dbe" # Double-Buffering Extension
    Load "v4l" # Video for Linux
    Load "extmod"
    Load "glx" # 3D layer
    Load "dri" # direct rendering
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "Keyboard1"
    Driver "kbd"
    Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
    Option "XkbLayout" "us(alt-intl)"
    Option "XkbOptions" "compose:rwin"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "Mouse1"
    Driver "mouse"
    Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
    Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "Mouse2"
    Driver "evdev"
    Option "device" "/dev/input/by-id/usb-Logitech_USB_Receiver-event-mouse"
    Option "HWheelRelativeAxisButtons" "7 6"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "SynapticsMouse1"
    Driver "synaptics"
    Option "SHMConfig" "on"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "monitor1"
    VendorName "Plug'n Play"
    
    # TV fullscreen mode or DVD fullscreen output.
    # 768x576 @ 79 Hz, 50 kHz hsync
    ModeLine "768x576"     50.00  768  832  846 1000   576  590  595  630
    
    # 768x576 @ 100 Hz, 61.6 kHz hsync
    ModeLine "768x576"     63.07  768  800  960 1024   576  578  590  616
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "device1"
    BoardName "Intel 810"
    Driver "intel"
    Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "screen1"
    Device "device1"
    Monitor "monitor1"

    SubSection "Display"
	    Depth		24
	    Modes		"1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
	    Virtual		2400 2400
    EndSubSection

EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "layout1"
    InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice "Mouse2" "SendCoreEvents"
    InputDevice "SynapticsMouse1" "SendCoreEvents"
    Screen "screen1"
EndSection

Few bugs to work out:

1. Login screen is now much larger (It's actually displaying at 1280x1024 on a 1024x768 screen, which is wrong) and displaced towards the lower right corner of the notebook screen.
2. It moved what I consider as my 'primary' desktop (wallpaper, and desktop icons) to the external screen.
3. It's horribly slow. You can literally paste ghosts of windows across the desktop if you drag a window. This is probably related to X.org being unable to find the i810 driver I was running before I changed the screen section???
4. X.org can't find the 'i810' driver it was using 20 minutes ago. "File not found". What is going on here?

Xolo · 07-12-2009, 06:18 AM

After testing several different configurations and Xorg setups I have to come to the conclusion that dualhead on the Intel 915GM/128MB chipset with the 'i810 and later' video drivers simply isn't possible and that this remains Windows territory only.
Apparently also the 'i810' driver has been deprecated and can no longer be installed from repository, leaving only the sub-optimal 'i810 and later' driver.
Furthermore the whole manual setup routine one has to go through just to get video output to two monitors set up simply isn't of this time any more, and considering the abysmal results under Linux the effort isn't worth the time spent.

I will not be testing dualhead further on this hardware as there are no workable solutions left.