Getting mutli-head, multi-user, multi-seat system of any kind working?

[ivaldes1]

My setup is an AMD sempron processor, ECS motherboard, 1 Gb of RAM, 3 nVidia GeForce FX 5200 PCI video cards. No amount of massaging or configuration could get the video drivers to work with multiple displays using either Ubuntu 8.04 or 8.10 beta or Fedora 9 or Fedora 10 beta. The 'restricted' nVidia drivers resulted in a strangely behaving boot up that failed in the text part of Fedora 9 boot. Ubuntu had other problems that are so far insurmountable. 20 hours into getting this to work without success. There is documentation by the ton on this subject but much of it is old, useless or simply does not work. Does anyone know of a reliable way of getting this to work?

-- IV

[smolloy]

At work I have run Fedora7 and now Fedora 9 with two monitors on an Nvidia card. I configured it through the Nvidia settings manager -- the default gnome display settings manager gives the wrong settings.

Are you trying to get this working on Fedora or Ubuntu now?

Can you try to describe in detail what you've tried and what errors you've seen?

Sorry you're having such a hard time -- welcome to the forums

[i92guboj]

My setup is an AMD sempron processor, ECS motherboard, 1 Gb of RAM, 3 nVidia GeForce FX 5200 PCI video cards. No amount of massaging or configuration could get the video drivers to work with multiple displays using either Ubuntu 8.04 or 8.10 beta or Fedora 9 or Fedora 10 beta. The 'restricted' nVidia drivers resulted in a strangely behaving boot up that failed in the text part of Fedora 9 boot. Ubuntu had other problems that are so far insurmountable. 20 hours into getting this to work without success. There is documentation by the ton on this subject but much of it is old, useless or simply does not work. Does anyone know of a reliable way of getting this to work?

-- IV

What did you already try? I could give you some indications, but it would be better if I knew what you tried.

You are definitely going to need some manual editing to get this to work. No graphical utility ever worked fine for me to configure X.

Anyway, a few tips here.

You need three devices sections: one per pci card. Look the xorg.conf man page, and search for BusID. When using multiple cards, this is mandatory.

Once you have the three devices, you are going to define as many Screen and Monitor sections are you wish, and assign to them the Device that you wish. This will require some reading on xorg.conf man page, you can ask back as much as you wish.

Give it a first try and if you can't bet it to work, post here your xorg.conf after your modifications and I will try to help.

[ivaldes1]

I have Fedora 9 installed right now but I've tried Fedora 10 beta and Ubuntu 8.04 and Ubuntu 8.10 beta hoping that the Gnome 2.24 multi-display GUI interface was working. I tried the proprietary nvidia drivers but there was always some glitch that caused it to not work, either missing nvidia-settings software with Ubuntu 8.04 to bizarre problems with both Ubuntu 8.10 beta and the recompiled kernel with Fedora 9. I've tried some xorg.conf and gdm configuration but it seems that none of the documentation I've used is up to date on how to specify these. xorg.conf looks nothing like what it used to look like several years ago. I've actually succeeded in doing this some years ago but it was exceedingly difficult. -- IV

At work I have run Fedora7 and now Fedora 9 with two monitors on an Nvidia card. I configured it through the Nvidia settings manager -- the default gnome display settings manager gives the wrong settings.

Are you trying to get this working on Fedora or Ubuntu now?

Can you try to describe in detail what you've tried and what errors you've seen?

Sorry you're having such a hard time -- welcome to the forums

[ivaldes1]

See my reply to the other posting, but xorg.conf looks nothing like what it did a few years ago. Is the man page for xorg.conf now the definitive guide? Which configuration guide is definitive now? It seems like lots of the old stuff does not work anymore.

-- IV

[i92guboj]

See my reply to the other posting, but xorg.conf looks nothing like what it did a few years ago. Is the man page for xorg.conf now the definitive guide? Which configuration guide is definitive now? It seems like lots of the old stuff does not work anymore.

-- IV

The xorg.conf man page is not a guide, it's just a manual. It should be correct 100% though, for the Xorg version that you have installed.

Note that the drivers might have specific options. For example, the options I commented for the nvidia driver is just -and only- for the nvidia driver. Those "driver specific" options can be usually checken in the readme files for the driver. The nvidia readmes are usually installed in /usr/share/doc/nvidia-<whatever/ or /usr/local/share/doc/nvidia-<whatever>.

That being said, *most* of the old stuff should work, the syntax hasn't changed that much over the years, but the drivers and the ways are new (twinview is also specific to nvidia, where other drivers still use xinerama which is generic).

Also, the guides are not reliable, and what you are trying to do is definitely something very specific, which not that many people do.

[i92guboj]

Quick note: I have no idea about graphical configurators (or command line ones for that matter). They never worked for me, and I am just a text-mode guy. I am more confortable when I know whats happening. Graphical configurators and assistants make me nervous.