Dual Monitors with two cards

[Nephroth]

I am running Red Hat Linux 7.3 and have both an ATi Radeon AIW AGP card and a Radeon 7000 PCI card. I would like to run dual monitor with continuous desktop. Unfortunately, i have no idea at all how to do this, i've tried a couple config files just sort of guessing based on what i've seen in unintuitive documents on google but none of them have done anything but give me lots of nice error messages. Any help is appreciated. --Nephroth

[Dolda2000]

Have you got the X server to work with each of the cards individually?

[Nephroth]

Nope, i haven't been able to get the second card to do anything yet.

[Dolda2000]

OK... what newbie level are you on? It would be good to know a little what you can do yourself, so that I don't write too much or too little.

Anyway, fire up a console and run "lspci", then post the results here. What driver are you using for the AGP card? I'm guessing it is the "radeon" driver.

If you like to work alone, a good source of information is XF86Config(5).

[Nephroth]

Ah, well I am not a newbie, but i'm also not highly experienced. I do have the monitors working now, i ran XFree86 -configure to get it to probe all my hardware and create a new config file in my /root directory then i added in my mouse info to that file and copied it over the exisiting (after backing up the existing one of course) X86Config-4 file. The only problem now is the second monitor can only get really low resolutions (320X200 and 640x480 it looks like) and i am now pretty unsure as how to make it go any higher. Also, i tend to get strange colors in konquerer and sometimes when a window is spanning both monitors the entire system will lock up and will require a reboot (incredibly inconvenient!)

Any help with this new set of problems is greatly appreciated --Nephroth

[Nephroth]

(however to answer your question, yes i am using the radeon driver for the AGP card)

[Nephroth]

Okay, i figure this is important to post, i dunno if i said it before but in addition to poor resolution i am also apparently stuck in 256 color mode which is not good, not good at all...

here is my XF86Config-4 file:

ection "ServerLayout"
Identifier "XFree86 Configured"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
Screen 1 "Screen1" RightOf "Screen0"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
ModulePath "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/CID/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "dri"
Load "extmod"
Load "glx"
Load "record"
Load "xtrap"
Load "speedo"
Load "type1"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "keyboard"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
#DisplaySize 280 210 # mm
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "CYB"
ModelName "5331"
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor1"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Monitor Model"
EndSection

Section "Device"
### Available Driver options are:-
### Values: [i]: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
### [arg]: arg optional
#Option "NoAccel" # [<bool>]
#Option "SWcursor" # [<bool>]
#Option "Dac6Bit" # [<bool>]
#Option "Dac8Bit" # [<bool>]
#Option "ForcePCIMode" # [<bool>]
#Option "CPPIOMode" # [<bool>]
#Option "CPusecTimeout" # [i]
#Option "AGPMode" # [i]
#Option "AGPSize" # [i]
#Option "RingSize" # [i]
#Option "BufferSize" # [i]
#Option "EnableDepthMoves" # [<bool>]
#Option "CrtScreen" # [<bool>]
#Option "PanelSize" # [<str>]
#Option "UseFBDev" # [<bool>]
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "ati"
VendorName "ATI"
BoardName "Radeon QD"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
### Available Driver options are:-
### Values: [i]: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
### [arg]: arg optional
#Option "NoAccel" # [<bool>]
#Option "SWcursor" # [<bool>]
#Option "Dac6Bit" # [<bool>]
#Option "Dac8Bit" # [<bool>]
#Option "ForcePCIMode" # [<bool>]
#Option "CPPIOMode" # [<bool>]
#Option "CPusecTimeout" # [i]
#Option "AGPMode" # [i]
#Option "AGPSize" # [i]
#Option "RingSize" # [i]
#Option "BufferSize" # [i]
#Option "EnableDepthMoves" # [<bool>]
#Option "CrtScreen" # [<bool>]
#Option "PanelSize" # [<str>]
#Option "UseFBDev" # [<bool>]
Identifier "Card1"
Driver "ati"
VendorName "ATI"
BoardName "Radeon VE QY"
BusID "PCI:0:6:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"

SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen1"
Device "Card1"
Monitor "Monitor1"

SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

[Dolda2000]

Strange. There's nothing wrong with that as I can see. Try this, though: In the Screen1 section, add the option "DefaultDepth 16" before the first Display subsection, and see if that increases the colordepth. Also, in the same Screen section, in the Display subsection with "Depth 16", add the string Modes "1024x768" (with the quotation marks), to see if that increases the resolution. There are also the key combinations CTRL+ALT+NumPad+ and CTRL+ALT+NumPad- to change resolutions, but I don't know how they'll react on a multiheaded configuration.
One more thing, though: Are you sure that the system really needs a reboot when it hangs? Have you tried pressing CTRL+ALT+F1 when it has hung? Or, providing you have a network at home, have you tried pinging the machine?

[Nephroth]

i tried adding the DefaultDepth value but for some reason the system hangs while X is loading...

[majorwoo]

what messages end up in the log file - or if you wait long enough does the X server dump giving you its log?