I just installed Fedora 12 using the LiveCD. It discovered my nvidia and samsung hardware with the dual monitors. In particular, it stretched the default desktop background across both screens. All was well.
Until I rebooted. Then, when I logged in, the desktop background was no longer stretched across both monitors, but each monitor had its own complete copy. Everything else works right: all windows stretch across the monitors as one large desktop.
I've played around with all the settings, googled for the problem, no joy. I even installed the livna kmod drivers and they would only recognize one monitor. Besides, the LiveCD did TheRightThing(tm), so it ought to work.
Any suggestions on how I might proceed?
Kirk
On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Kirk Lowery empirical.humanist@gmail.com wrote:
I've played around with all the settings, googled for the problem, no joy. I even installed the livna kmod drivers and they would only recognize one monitor. Besides, the LiveCD did TheRightThing(tm), so it ought to work.
I've been playing around with nvidia cards on a number of machines the last couple of days, and there is a gotcha with the RPM Fusion Nvidia drivers.
That is, if nouveua is loaded, the nvidia driver won't work. So, I would say, dump one or the other. Either remove kmod-nvidia, or blacklist nouveau, as shown on this page:
http://fedorasolved.org/video-solutions/nvidia-yum-kmod/ (one caveat about this page)*
If you look at dmesg, and see a bunch of nvidia related errors, try blacklisting nouveau.
* My caveat about those instructions... I found that I had to make sure the nouveau driver didn't load with grub, which involves running dracut after adding rdblacklist=nouveau to grub.conf. Looking at things now, some of my problems may be due to misspelling nouveau.
On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 3:15 PM, Michael Semcheski mhsemcheski@gmail.comwrote:
On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Kirk Lowery empirical.humanist@gmail.com wrote:
I've played around with all the settings, googled for the problem, no
joy. I
even installed the livna kmod drivers and they would only recognize one monitor. Besides, the LiveCD did TheRightThing(tm), so it ought to work.
I've been playing around with nvidia cards on a number of machines the last couple of days, and there is a gotcha with the RPM Fusion Nvidia drivers.
That is, if nouveua is loaded, the nvidia driver won't work. So, I would say, dump one or the other. Either remove kmod-nvidia, or blacklist nouveau, as shown on this page:
http://fedorasolved.org/video-solutions/nvidia-yum-kmod/ (one caveat about this page)*
If you look at dmesg, and see a bunch of nvidia related errors, try blacklisting nouveau.
Yes, I had blacklisted nouveau in grub.conf. The problem with the livna drivers is that they would not detect at boot time the second monitor.
I'd like to get nouveau to work, though.
Thanks for the response!
Kirk
Copy the xorg.conf file from the cd to where it belongs.
On 12/17/09 2:04 PM, Kirk Lowery wrote:
I just installed Fedora 12 using the LiveCD. It discovered my nvidia and samsung hardware with the dual monitors. In particular, it stretched the default desktop background across both screens. All was well.
Until I rebooted. Then, when I logged in, the desktop background was no longer stretched across both monitors, but each monitor had its own complete copy. Everything else works right: all windows stretch across the monitors as one large desktop.
I've played around with all the settings, googled for the problem, no joy. I even installed the livna kmod drivers and they would only recognize one monitor. Besides, the LiveCD did TheRightThing(tm), so it ought to work.
Any suggestions on how I might proceed?
Kirk
On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Rallias UberNerd robinstar1574@gmail.comwrote:
Copy the xorg.conf file from the cd to where it belongs.
Hi, Rallias!
Thanks for the response and the great idea! The same thing had occurred to me, especially as I had used this technique to install Fedora 10.
Only...there isn't any xorg.conf! Neither on the LiveCD nor on the installed hard disk! At least, it's not in /etc/X11 and locate only shows the man page.
So how does nouveau get away without an xorg.conf?
Kirk
On Thu, 2009-12-24 at 06:41 -0500, Kirk Lowery wrote:
So how does nouveau get away without an xorg.conf?
The Xorg server will probe your monitor to get the information it needs to configure it. This is known as "EDID" (no doubt someone here can tell us what that acronym stands for). This is highly advantageous if your monitor supports EDID (almost all monitors sold today do), as configuration is totally automatic. The problem comes in if you have an older monitor that doesn't do EDID, then you're screwed:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=539289
That's for my laptop, I have a similar problem with a desktop at work where I have an older (~3 years) Dell monitor. My issues with the laptop started when I moved from F11 to F12, but it has been several versions of Fedora since I have been able to use full 1920x1080 resolution on that old Dell at work. At home where I have a newer Dell monitor that does do EDID, it works great on two different machines, one with the Nvidia proprietary driver and one with the default nouveau setup.
--Greg
On Thursday 24 December 2009 14:07:20 Greg Woods wrote:
On Thu, 2009-12-24 at 06:41 -0500, Kirk Lowery wrote:
So how does nouveau get away without an xorg.conf?
The Xorg server will probe your monitor to get the information it needs to configure it. This is known as "EDID" (no doubt someone here can tell us what that acronym stands for).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_display_identification_data
Best, :-) Marko
On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 9:07 AM, Greg Woods woods@ucar.edu wrote:
On Thu, 2009-12-24 at 06:41 -0500, Kirk Lowery wrote:
So how does nouveau get away without an xorg.conf?
The Xorg server will probe your monitor to get the information it needs to configure it. This is known as "EDID" (no doubt someone here can tell us what that acronym stands for). This is highly advantageous if your monitor supports EDID (almost all monitors sold today do), as configuration is totally automatic. The problem comes in if you have an older monitor that doesn't do EDID, then you're screwed:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=539289
That's for my laptop, I have a similar problem with a desktop at work where I have an older (~3 years) Dell monitor. My issues with the laptop started when I moved from F11 to F12, but it has been several versions of Fedora since I have been able to use full 1920x1080 resolution on that old Dell at work. At home where I have a newer Dell monitor that does do EDID, it works great on two different machines, one with the Nvidia proprietary driver and one with the default nouveau setup.
So...why does the xserver and nouveau do the RightThing(tm) on the LiveCD
(namely, stretches the background image across both monitors), but does the WrongThing(tm) (namely, duplicates the background image on each monitor) when it boots from the hard disk after the install?
Actually, I don't care why. :-)
What I'm after is a way to tell the xserver to do it just like the LiveCD does. I figure some boot (kernel?) parameter, or some command line option supplied to the xserver at boot time?
Thanks for the helpful info!
Kirk
On Thu, 2009-12-24 at 11:43 -0500, Kirk Lowery wrote:
What I'm after is a way to tell the xserver to do it just like the LiveCD does. I figure some boot (kernel?) parameter, or some command line option supplied to the xserver at boot time?
Did you try System -> Preferences -> Display (GNOME) or whatever the equivalent is in KDE?
--Greg
On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 12:24 PM, Greg Woods woods@ucar.edu wrote:
On Thu, 2009-12-24 at 11:43 -0500, Kirk Lowery wrote:
What I'm after is a way to tell the xserver to do it just like the LiveCD does. I figure some boot (kernel?) parameter, or some command line option supplied to the xserver at boot time?
Did you try System -> Preferences -> Display (GNOME) or whatever the equivalent is in KDE?
Yes, I did. It was very strange: when I first brought it up, it had been properly preconfigured for my video card and recongnized my monitor type correctly. However, when I went to the tab for dual monitors, it was not checked. Fine, I thought to myself, I'll just configure it now and restart X and all will be good. I checked dual monitors. Selected the monitor type for the second monitor. And then I tried to save it. It just sat there. No, it hadn't crashed, it just acted as if the "OK" button was not connected to any code! The only way to get rid of the Display applet was to "Cancel". (BTW, I'm using Gnome, not KDE.)
Thanks for the suggestion! After I figure out what's going on, I probably should file a bug for this.
Kirk
On Thursday 24 December 2009 05:41:03 Kirk Lowery wrote:
Thanks for the response and the great idea! The same thing had occurred to me, especially as I had used this technique to install Fedora 10.
Only...there isn't any xorg.conf! Neither on the LiveCD nor on the installed hard disk! At least, it's not in /etc/X11 and locate only shows the man page.
So how does nouveau get away without an xorg.conf?
Kirk
I use dual head with nouveau using the following xorg.conf:
##/etc/X11/xorg.conf Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Default Layout" Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0 EndSection
Section "Files"
EndSection
Section "ServerFlags" Option "AIGLX" "off" EndSection
Section "Monitor" Identifier "DVI-I-0" Option "PreferredMode" "1680x1050" EndSection
Section "Monitor" Identifier "VGA-0" Option "RightOf" "DVI-I-0" Option "PreferredMode" "1280x1024" Option "DPMS" "Off" EndSection
Section "Device" Identifier "Device0" Driver "nouveau" EndSection
Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen0" Device "Device0" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection
Section "Extensions" Option "Composite" "Disable" EndSection
On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 1:24 PM, Anthony Messina amessina@messinet.comwrote:
On Thursday 24 December 2009 05:41:03 Kirk Lowery wrote:
Thanks for the response and the great idea! The same thing had occurred
to
me, especially as I had used this technique to install Fedora 10.
Only...there isn't any xorg.conf! Neither on the LiveCD nor on the installed hard disk! At least, it's not in /etc/X11 and locate only
shows
the man page.
So how does nouveau get away without an xorg.conf?
Kirk
I use dual head with nouveau using the following xorg.conf:
Thanks for this! I'm of course away for the holidays and won't be able to try this until next week. I will report the result here...
Kirk
On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 1:24 PM, Anthony Messina amessina@messinet.comwrote:
On Thursday 24 December 2009 05:41:03 Kirk Lowery wrote:
Thanks for the response and the great idea! The same thing had occurred
to
me, especially as I had used this technique to install Fedora 10.
Only...there isn't any xorg.conf! Neither on the LiveCD nor on the installed hard disk! At least, it's not in /etc/X11 and locate only
shows
the man page.
So how does nouveau get away without an xorg.conf?
Kirk
I use dual head with nouveau using the following xorg.conf:
Well, I tried this conf and it worked -- exactly as without an xorg.conf: everything about dual head works except for the background stretch.
I guess I'm going to have to get in touch with the LiveCD developers, and find out who does the nouveau stuff for it; either that or the nouveau IRC.
If I ever solve this, I'll report back here.
Thanks for everyone's responses and for holding my hand on this!
Kirk
On Wed, 2009-12-30 at 08:20 -0500, Kirk Lowery wrote:
Well, I tried this conf and it worked -- exactly as without an xorg.conf: everything about dual head works except for the background stretch.
I guess I'm going to have to get in touch with the LiveCD developers, and find out who does the nouveau stuff for it; either that or the nouveau IRC.
xorg.conf file isn't used because the system is setup so that everything (if possible)is detected automatically and setup/used depending on what it finds (via some type of id that is used on various cards/monitors). There are the exceptions I guess with dual monitors and certain setups that normal users probably wouldn't encounter, as well as maybe certain laptop setups. I would say those type things might have to have an xorg.conf file to get into more detail to get those type situations working as they are suppose to.
On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 8:48 AM, Mike Chambers mike@miketc.net wrote:
On Wed, 2009-12-30 at 08:20 -0500, Kirk Lowery wrote:
Well, I tried this conf and it worked -- exactly as without an xorg.conf: everything about dual head works except for the background stretch.
I guess I'm going to have to get in touch with the LiveCD developers, and find out who does the nouveau stuff for it; either that or the nouveau IRC.
xorg.conf file isn't used because the system is setup so that everything (if possible)is detected automatically and setup/used depending on what it finds (via some type of id that is used on various cards/monitors). There are the exceptions I guess with dual monitors and certain setups that normal users probably wouldn't encounter, as well as maybe certain laptop setups. I would say those type things might have to have an xorg.conf file to get into more detail to get those type situations working as they are suppose to.
So...if a file /etc/X11/xorg.conf exists, does nouveau use it? If not, how does one force its use?
Kirk
On Wed, 2009-12-30 at 09:08 -0500, Kirk Lowery wrote:
So...if a file /etc/X11/xorg.conf exists, does nouveau use it? If not, how does one force its use?
the xorg.conf is used if it exists, and what's in it is used to overwrite what is detected automatically.
Example, if you want to install nvidia driver, then you have to list the nvidia driver in the config. Same as if you have a different type monitor setup, or mode lines or whatever, just add the parts you want to change in the .conf file and that should work. I beleive the system is setup to look for an xorg.conf file first, use what is in it, then auto detect everything else.
Someone can correct me if I am off base here.
On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 9:37 AM, Mike Chambers mike@miketc.net wrote:
On Wed, 2009-12-30 at 09:08 -0500, Kirk Lowery wrote:
So...if a file /etc/X11/xorg.conf exists, does nouveau use it? If not, how does one force its use?
the xorg.conf is used if it exists, and what's in it is used to overwrite what is detected automatically.
Example, if you want to install nvidia driver, then you have to list the nvidia driver in the config. Same as if you have a different type monitor setup, or mode lines or whatever, just add the parts you want to change in the .conf file and that should work. I beleive the system is setup to look for an xorg.conf file first, use what is in it, then auto detect everything else.
And to generate the conf file in the first place, would you say the best way to start would be to 'X -configure' and tweak from there?
Kirk
-
Anthony Joseph Messina -
Greg Woods -
Kirk Lowery -
Marko Vojinovic -
Michael Semcheski -
Mike Chambers -
Rallias UberNerd