F10 dual head w/ nvidia geforce cards, nv (or other free) driver

sosiouxme · #1 20th March 2009, 02:47 AM

I have a computer with old nvidia cards. Under Fedora 8 dual heads worked fine with the plain nv driver. I don't really wish to install the proprietary drivers if I don't have to (and given nv worked previously I don't think I have to).

Under F9 and F10 I've had no luck getting the cards even recognized as existing by the display config app, much less working. If I try to use my working Xorg.conf from F8, X comes up in a state where one screen is on with just grey background, the second screen is off, and nothing is responsive (Ctrl-Alt-Backspace does nothing). I don't think there are any log messages of interest but I'd be happy to look for some if I knew what to look for.

I'd appreciate anyone who could help me get this working (what to look at, how to proceed) so I can move on from F8 :-) Many thanks in advance.

lspci shows these video devices (I'm only wanting to use the first two - first is onboard)
00:0d.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 6100 nForce 430 (rev a2)
01:06.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 4000] (rev c1)
01:08.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 4000] (rev c1)

my Xorg.conf from F8 looks as follows:
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Multihead layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0" LeftOf "Screen1"
Screen 1 "Screen1" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
Option "Xinerama" "on"
Option "Clone" "off"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor1"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "LCD Panel 1280x1024"
HorizSync 31.5 - 67.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 75.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "nv"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard1"
Driver "nv"
VendorName "Videocard Vendor"
BoardName "nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 4000]"
BusID "PCI:1:6:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen1"
Device "Videocard1"
Monitor "Monitor1"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024"
EndSubSection
EndSection

***Hlingler*** · #2 20th March 2009, 03:23 AM

EGADS! NVidia dual-head with "nv" driver! Run!

IIRC, F8 xorg.conf may not work in F9+ if you attempt a cut-and-paste. Something to be aware of. See if this helps: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=201652

V

sosiouxme · #3 20th March 2009, 06:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hlingler

EGADS! NVidia dual-head with "nv" driver! Run!

dude, it used to work! why did it break?

my xorg.conf is quite simple - much the same sections as described in the thread you linked, though of course no twinview/nvidia driver stuff. the tools mentioned in that thread assume the nvidia driver in one form or another. i suppose i may have to go that route, but isn't there a free driver that'll work? there used to be! i do appreciate the pointer, just hoping to stay pure.

JohnVV · #4 20th March 2009, 04:24 AM

well you don't want to use it but i have had no problems with the driver in my sig.
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/96.43.11
on my gf 2 card

I was for a while using the downgrade to fedora 8 xorg but nvidia decided ( or one of there devs did) to support the new xorg in 9 and 10
you might want to read through
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/
"NVIDIA Legacy Graphics Cards"
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=37

read this post about the beta drivers
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=126954

from the look of it you might have already posted here
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/show...03&postcount=5

sosiouxme · #5 20th March 2009, 06:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnVV

well you don't want to use it but i have had no problems with the driver in my sig.

i realize many (probably the vast majority) of people do just fine with the proprietary drivers. my reticence is based on (1) a wish to support free software and drivers and (2) rants i've heard over the years from kernel engineers about the havoc proprietary video drivers cause if and when things *do* go wrong.

all the same, i suppose if no one comes up with any better ideas, i'll try that route. gotta have my dual heads! thanks for the links.

sosiouxme · #6 20th March 2009, 07:05 AM

it seems mine is a common enough story (nv worked in F8, not beyond) as reported in this "low priority" bugzilla entry: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=442965

i have yet to find anyone who's claimed to get this working with nv. anyone know what happened to the "nouveau" driver? else i guess it's proprietary for me :-(

***Hlingler*** · #7 20th March 2009, 04:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sosiouxme

dude, it used to work! why did it break?

my xorg.conf is quite simple - much the same sections as described in the thread you linked, though of course no twinview/nvidia driver stuff. the tools mentioned in that thread assume the nvidia driver in one form or another. i suppose i may have to go that route, but isn't there a free driver that'll work? there used to be! i do appreciate the pointer, just hoping to stay pure.

I do not know exactly why things broke, but the change to new X11R7.4/Xorg-1.5 release broke a lot of stuff, at least initially. Much has been fixed, much has not.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sosiouxme

it seems mine is a common enough story (nv worked in F8, not beyond) as reported in this "low priority" bugzilla entry: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=442965

i have yet to find anyone who's claimed to get this working with nv. anyone know what happened to the "nouveau" driver? else i guess it's proprietary for me :-(

Nothing happened to "nouveau" - in fact, "nv" is being dropped as the default in favor of "nouveau". Give it a shot: switch line in xorg.conf from "nv" to "nouveau". Re-start X11, see what happens....

V

sosiouxme · #8 20th March 2009, 08:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hlingler

Nothing happened to "nouveau" - in fact, "nv" is being dropped as the default in favor of "nouveau". Give it a shot: switch line in xorg.conf from "nv" to "nouveau". Re-start X11, see what happens....

ah - thanks. nouveau was not listed in the xorg man page as a known driver, so i sort of assumed it went away. well, i subsituted nouveau for nv as you suggested, and at least X broke faster instead of leaving things in a non-responsive state :-) the output of startx wasn't very helpful - i can try this again and post if anyone would care to see - something along the line of "it broke."

i got the nvidia drivers from rpmfusion and installed them, rebooted, ran the "livna display configuration" tool, restarted X, and ran the nvidia settings tool... and what do you know, it doesn't recognize the PCI graphics card either, just the onboard one! mind you, i know the cards work because i just reboot over to fedora 8 and everything is fine. why on earth would the display tools not detect these cards? are they all required to be on the same bus or something? i even tried manually adding my old Device1/Screen1 sections to xorg.conf to see if it would take the hint... no.

any ideas? i'm really confused here.

***Hlingler*** · #9 20th March 2009, 10:03 PM

As I suspected: Xorg is detecting the chipsets just fine, but blissfully ignoring all but one (marked with asterisk):

Code:

(--) PCI:*(0@0:13:0) nVidia Corporation GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 rev 162, Mem @ 0xf2000000/16777216, 0xd0000000/268435456, 0xf7000000/16777216, BIOS @ 0x????????/131072
(--) PCI: (0@1:6:0) nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 4000] rev 193, Mem @ 0xf3000000/16777216, 0xe0000000/134217728, BIOS @ 0x????????/131072
(--) PCI: (0@1:8:0) nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 4000] rev 193, Mem @ 0xf5000000/16777216, 0xe8000000/134217728, BIOS @ 0x????????/131072

Unfortunately, I don't have time right now to sort through all the rest of the log files to see what's going on. Will try later, or maybe someone else will help....

V

EDIT: Yes, we are painfully aware that attachments are busted....

**AdamW** · #10 20th March 2009, 10:14 PM

AFAIK, multi-card multi-head just doesn't work at all with RandR 1.2-based drivers - including nouveau - yet. They aren't designed to handle multiple cards. I may be completely off-base on this one, but that's what I remember getting out of the X devs when I was chatting with them about this a few months ago.

I'm not sure why it doesn't work with nv any more, though. That's still an RandR 1.1-based driver. Some /var/log/Xorg.0.log outputs might help, I guess.