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On Sun, 7 Nov 2010, Kai Hendry wrote:
On 7 November 2010 10:05, Gordon Henderson <gordon+dcglug@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:So - then spend several hours getting frustrated, watching Linux crash (!!! I mean really, Eek - it crashed! It never does that on me!)Probably a hardware issue.
Very probably.New (ish) Atom motherboard with Intel graphics on-board and ancient PCI graphics card. I've trid 4 now - 2 x Diamond Riva128's (nVidia), and S3 card and (currently) and ATI Mach65 BT card.
The ATI card will only do 1024x768 in 16bpp due to lack of GRAM (2MB). The Riva128 will do 1280x1024 in 24bpp, but it's not stable. Crashes the system when it comes out of screensaver mode for example.
It does work - in dual screen mode - as in 2 separate screens. I even have 2 instances of FVWM working on it (fvwn does that by default) so-far so good.
However, I can't drag windows from one screen to the other. I could actually live without that if I could launch a firefox in each screen, but I can't. I launch it on one, and then try on the other and get the dreaded "firefox is already running, but I can't communicate with it" error )-:
I can do that on the same screen I originally launched firefox in, just not on the other one.
I could run Chrome on one and firefox on the other, but that's not really what I want. I wanted to put a firefox on the secondary display to keep track of some stuff while working on the main display, but I need firefox in the main display (in another virtual window) for other stuff (and speed - the ATI card won't play videos for example!)
But what I really wanted was Xinerama going. It won't. X crashes and burns (segv) whenever I enable it.
Actually, I've just worked out how to get firefox on both screens - create a new profile. So that means 2 full-blown firefoxes running. I've got 2GB of RAM - can probably live with it.
So I might give the Riva128 card a final go as it's got 4GB of GRAM on it and it woud be nice to get 1280x1024 on the other monitor...
Trying a million combinations of xorg.conf, setting the BIOS to use the PCI card as primary, compiling new kernels, etc. and I still haven't got what I'd call a satisfactory and stable combination. I get it to the point of dual-monitor, then but I enable Xinemara and it crashes again.a modern stock X should be able to control a second monitor via xrandr. No other configs or magic required.
Well, it's the stock X from Debian Lenny and I think you ought to do more reading about X.Org, Xinerama and randr... I certinaly have been...
More searching finds bad news:
From:
http://www.debian-administration.org/users/johns/weblog/2
The version of X.Org in Lenny no longer supports Xinerama on multiple
graphics cards, and xrandr 1.2 doesn't support multiple graphics
cards. It seems that support for it is being worked on for xrandr 1.3,
It looks like, from that page, that I'll have to un-install ann X.Org and
libraries from Lenny, then get the X.Org package from Etch to make this
work as I want it to work. I doubt I can just un-install X.Org as it will
remove everything that depends on it. That page suggests a clean install.
I'm actually really surprised that Debian appears to have cocked-up in this respect, although gidding deeper, it's probably not Debiand fault, but the X.Org people - there is cricicism of deprecating Xinerama before RandR is fully ready...
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randr#RandR_1.2 Bother on that front. However I now have something that's usable at least. Gordon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq