edit: please see bold bit at end of next post for current linux questions /edit
my system:
nforce2 400 - sound, nic
geforce 6600 gt, agp 128mb
1 gig kingston value pc3200
mobile xp @ 1.9ghz
So I'm trying to get tvout working on my Slackware install, but everytime I try to start x with the dual screen serverlayout I've setup, my screen goes completely corrupt like
this. linux is still running underneath, as I can su into root and enter init 6 while the screen is that way, or hit ctrl+alt+del, which causes the corruption to dance around a bit while the text that's supposed to be onscreen(sending term signal.. etc) scrolls up, before finally rebooting and fixing the display.
After spending countless hours with different xorg.conf setups and reading tutorials/examples/threads about xorg.conf with no luck, I decided I would install another distro on my linux drive's second partition and see if my tvout-xorg.conf would work there. I went with SimplyMepis becuase some of the threads I'd been reading included stories of tvout success with Mepis. Long story short, the tvout worked fine on Mepis, expect that when I quit X (well, actually reboot the system from KDE), I get similar corruption after X quits, like
this briefly, followed by
this corruption until the computer actually reboots. Otherwise it seems to work fine (though I haven't spent much time at all in Mepis once I found that it worked). After I fine tuned my xorg.conf in Mepis, I basically just used the same one in Slackware, except changing the default layout to the one for just my monitor. It works fine when I just start the default but when I do "-- -layout dual" I'm back to square one.
Now mepis already had nvidia drivers installed with the distro, so I tried installing the same version in Slackware. Unfortunately, with this older version, I couldn't even start x with just my monitor without gettting the same corruption.
There are a couple things in the xorg logs that look like they could be the culprit (the damn signal 11 for example), but I haven't got a clue what to do about them. I have verbose logs for both a good startup with just my monitor, and a bad startup with my monitor and tv. I'll post them in their entirety if requested, but for now, I'll just post the (WW)s and (EE)s..
in a good (single display) startup:
(WW) Open APM failed (/dev/apm_bios) (No such device) <-- I get this everytime and have read that I can safely ignore it with no ill effects. This is the only EE or WW on a good startup.
in a bad (dual display) startup:
(WW) NVIDIA(0): Bad V_BIOS checksum <-- that's it for a dual startup WWs and EEs, but at the end of the log I get this
....
(II) Initializing built-in extension COMPOSITE
(II) Initializing built-in extension DAMAGE
(II) Initializing built-in extension XEVIE
(II) Initializing extension GLX
*** If unresolved symbols were reported above, they might not
*** be the reason for the server aborting.
Fatal server error:
Caught signal 11. Server aborting
so at this point I'm completely at a loss for what I should be doing/looking-into next. According to the logs, I'm using the same version of X(6.8.2) on both distros, but Mepis uses a 2.6 kernel (2.6.15) and Slack uses 2.4.something. Unfortunately at this point in my linux experience, I really don't know what to make of that or if I should care. I know now that the dual screen section of xorg.conf is just fine... but I don't know what to consider next(except trying to flash the bios on my video card which I'd rather avoid).
Can someone please point me in the right direction so I can try to get this working? If any more info is required, it shall be provided.