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Ok, I'm trying my hand at linux... again! Before I go any further, I would like to mention that I have been reading any manuals, other posts, etc to learn more. I have managed to mnt the ntfs drives on my windows partitions, plus got flac and the flac-xmms pluging working fine this way. When it comes to my triple monitor setup, I'm a little confused with the manuals, though. Like in some of them, they'll say to type in the window... and I'm like, what window? I assume Konsole. Anyway...
I've got a triple monitor setup. It works just fine under windows. I've got 2 video cards. One is an agp ATI AIW Radeon 7500. The other is a pci ATI Radeon 7500. My main monitor is a Hewlett Packard HP D3859A 17", which is hooked up to the agp card. The other two monitors that I have are a Gateway VX900 19" and an IBM P200 20", respectively. These two are hooked up to the pci card.
The main monitor on the agp card works just fine. The other 2 monitors on the pci card are... well, just dead weights at the moment. From the way I understand it, it's pretty much a matter of editing the xorg.conf file. Is this correct? Or is there something else that I need to do?
I do know how to open up the .conf file. And I'm sure I could edit. I'm just not sure what exactly to edit, and a few things that I read in some of the manuals like finding bus ids are just confusing to me, so far. Btw, I'm using Fedora Core 2. Here's a copy of the xorg.conf file:
# Xorg configuration created by system-config-display
# RgbPath is the location of the RGB database. Note, this is the name of the
# file minus the extension (like ".txt" or ".db"). There is normally
# no need to change the default.
# Multiple FontPath entries are allowed (they are concatenated together)
# By default, Red Hat 6.0 and later now use a font server independent of
# the X server to render fonts.
RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
FontPath "unix/:7100"
EndSection
# Specify which keyboard LEDs can be user-controlled (eg, with xset(1))
# Option "Xleds" "1 2 3"
# To disable the XKEYBOARD extension, uncomment XkbDisable.
# Option "XkbDisable"
# To customise the XKB settings to suit your keyboard, modify the
# lines below (which are the defaults). For example, for a non-U.S.
# keyboard, you will probably want to use:
# Option "XkbModel" "pc102"
# If you have a US Microsoft Natural keyboard, you can use:
# Option "XkbModel" "microsoft"
#
# Then to change the language, change the Layout setting.
# For example, a german layout can be obtained with:
# Option "XkbLayout" "de"
# or:
# Option "XkbLayout" "de"
# Option "XkbVariant" "nodeadkeys"
#
# If you'd like to switch the positions of your capslock and
# control keys, use:
# Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:swapcaps"
# Or if you just want both to be control, use:
# Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:nocaps"
#
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "keyboard"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection
I am in the same situation singel vga agp card and dual vga, pci card. (though different cards). Have you found a solution to your issue yet, or maybe a reference site or such? Anyone else got any ideas?
Nope, I still haven't got it working. This is what I get. When I have both the agp and the pci cards inserted, Fedora seems to only recognize the agp card, so I only get the one monitor that's hooked up to that card.
When I take the agp card out of my system, then Fedora configures the pci card for dual monitors. Ok, so now I've also got the bus id for that card.
I put the agp card back in the system, and tried editing the xorg.conf file, adding in the info for the pci card, etc. The first time I did this, x wouldn't start. It gave me an error something along the lines of the word "section" is in the wrong place. I think I may have left a " out.
Not knowing how to change xorg.conf back to the original via command, I settled for reinstalling Fedora. I again tried editing xorg.conf. This time, I checked and double checked. It all looked fine compared to some of the other's I've seen posted. This 2nd time, once again, x wouldn't start. The error on the 2nd attempt was that there wasn't any such device on the bus id for the pci card.
Whoohoo! I finally got it. Much thanks goes to jduck, as I used his solution as a bit of a template for my own solution. Just as jduck did, I also had to remove the screen identifier from my agp card. Screen 0 and Screen 1 were used just for the dual port pci card. In my case, I had to turn xinerama on.
Its kinda wierd cause I tried that screen 0 & 1 thing and it didnt work. I think its because I dont have the latest driver for my pci card (i have the nvidia "nv" driver but not the "nvidia" driver). Anyways I've gonna build my kernel then install the driver if its not there (woohoo finally moving up to 2.6!).
My kernel version is 2.6.5-1.358. I don't think ATI even has drivers for my cards. I checked the site out and what drivers I found were for the later cards. So, I'm just using what came with the distro. The tv tuner probably won't work because of that, but right now, I don't care. Getting my 3 monitors going were my main concern. I can always go back into windows for the tv if needed.
Anyway, concerning your prob. I'm assuming you've got the corrent BusID's. Have you checked the xorg or xfree log file? I was pointed towards that on another board. While it didn't offer me too much, at least told me that it was just a problem with the conf file. You may want to check that, if you haven't already.
after building my kernel (which took several days cause of problems) and installing the nvidia driver (quite easy) i got my triple monitor working using the screen 0, screen 1 trick mentioned above, (now im battling my tv tuner card which displays video but no audio).
Anyways thanks a whole lot for the help newlyded1 !!!! Its much appreciated
Originally posted by newlyded1 My kernel version is 2.6.5-1.358. I don't think ATI even has drivers for my cards. I checked the site out and what drivers I found were for the later cards. So, I'm just using what came with the distro. The tv tuner probably won't work because of that, but right now, I don't care. Getting my 3 monitors going were my main concern. I can always go back into windows for the tv if needed.
Good luck on the TV tuner I tried for two weeks to get my 7500 going if you want to try your luck with the drivers for it they are here.
after building my kernel (which took several days cause of problems) and installing the nvidia driver (quite easy) i got my triple monitor working using the screen 0, screen 1 trick mentioned above, (now im battling my tv tuner card which displays video but no audio).
Anyways thanks a whole lot for the help newlyded1 !!!! Its much appreciated
If you are using the bttv module I believe there is an audio capture module you may have to have compiled.
Sorry to hijack this thread as your talking about tv cards now, but I'm trying to get two monitors to work as one screen. As I understand I will need to edit the xorg configuration file, how do I do that.
but I'm trying to get two monitors to work as one screen
I am assuming you want two different outputs on the two monitors (not both displaying the same thing).
To do this, make sure you have the lastest matrox drivers that support your card. This page on the matrox site has the drivers for your card, but they are for older versions of Red Hat. Im not sure if fedora is backwards compatible with drivers for older versions of red hat. You can try some of the 3rd party drivers, which can be found on this page (also here is the complete list ).
Once you installed the lastest drivers, put the following as the device, screen, serverflags, and serverlayout sections of your xfree86 config (remove the ones that you hve now and make sure you BACKUP your existing one!!!!!!)(once again, this will save ALOT of headaches, BACKUP xfree86 config, I only say this cause I was pretty stupid in the past and had X crash on me because of a faulty xfree86 config file)
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "mga"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "Matrox Millennium G450"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0" #Since your card is agp this is the most likely id, but check with lspci command
Screen 0 #This is the trick that will hopefully make it work
EndSection
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