Dual graphics card & dual monitor, right one rotated

Dual graphics card & dual monitor, right one rotated

Postby prn183 » Jan 7th, '21, 21:40

Hi
On my Mageia 7 desktop box I have a 1920x1200 Iiyama monitor connected to an Nvidia GeForce 210 card, and to the right of it a CTX P700 1200x1024 monitor connected to the mobo-built-in Intel HD 4600 graphics adapter, 90 degr. rotated. I want to have the desktop extended over both monitors, but I can't get it together.
At the times of Mageia-5 I had it working (after considerable experimentation), but when upgrading to Mageia-6 I stupidly forgot to backup the working xorg.conf. IIRC under Mageia-5 I had to sacrifice s/th (color depth or acceleration or translucency or so), but at least I had one virtual screen stretched over two monitors.
Over the years I gave it a few tries but to no avail. For some reasons (a.o., much more working from home) I'd really like to have it working again. On Windows (multiboot on the same box) this is a piece of cake but under Mageia it's a PITA.
Any suggestions on how to get it together?

(Current xorg.conf attached (works for just Iiyama 1920x1200 monitor), incl. commented out sections I tried over the years)

Thanks
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Re: Dual graphics card & dual monitor, right one rotated

Postby doktor5000 » Jan 8th, '21, 17:45

Can you please add the output of
Code: Select all
xrandr -q


What you want is a bit more difficult, as the monitors are connected to different graphics cards, and currently you only have the entries enabled for the primary monitor/screen.
You need to at least enable the "Device" section for the intel chip again, afterwards it should be possible to setup the virtual screen / extended desktop using xrandr or e.g. kscreen or whatever randr frontend you want to use.
It also depends on your BIOS, if you have something called Optimus (hybrid graphics) enabled or not. Have a look at e.g. https://www.dropbox.com/s/elcz258bjbfl8 ... triple.txt for an example configuration with multiple monitors on such a hybrid setup.
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Re: Dual graphics card & dual monitor, right one rotated

Postby prn183 » Jan 10th, '21, 14:37

Thanks for the prompt reply and sorry for a late answer from me - I have to squeeze this in between various work and private assignments :-)

On topic:
I've uncommented out all inactive sections in the xorg.conf I uploaded, restarted in runmode 3 and then, after startx, in a terminal:

Code: Select all
$  xrandr -q
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1920 x 1200, maximum 8192 x 8192
DVI-I-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VGA-0 connected primary 1920x1200+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 550mm x 344mm
   1920x1200     59.88*+
   1920x1080     60.00 
   1680x1050     59.95 
   1600x1200     60.00 
   1440x900      74.98    59.89 
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02 
   1152x864      75.00 
   1024x768      75.03    70.07    60.00 
   800x600       75.00    72.19    60.32 
   640x480       75.00    72.81    59.94 
DVI-I-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
$


(where AFAICS there's no mention of the second monitor let alone Intel card)
and in Xorg.0.log (attached) I see that the Intel driver is seen but the CTX PV700 monitor apparently isn't.
Hmmm.

Maybe relevant: both monitors only have a VGA connector and are connected to the VGA output ports of the respective graphics cards (Intel is actually integrated on the mobo.)

Meanwhile I'm studying the triple-screen xorg.conf you uploaded to see what lines are really indispensable - I guess there's a lot of cruft in mine.

I also remembered that in the Mageia-5 xorg.conf that I lost I had to add some numbers to shift the right screen up and down. Should I define a big virtual screen encompassing bot monitors somewhere?
Attachments
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Last edited by doktor5000 on Jan 10th, '21, 16:35, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: added code tags
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Re: Dual graphics card & dual monitor, right one rotated

Postby doktor5000 » Jan 10th, '21, 17:44

It does not seem the intel GPU is used at all, and the nvidia driver only determines a virtual screen the size of your primary monitor:

Code: Select all
[  1208.761] (II) NVIDIA(0): Validated MetaModes:
[  1208.761] (II) NVIDIA(0):     "CRT-1:1920x1200"
[  1208.761] (II) NVIDIA(0):     "CRT-1:1680x1050"
[  1208.761] (II) NVIDIA(0):     "CRT-1:1440x900"
[  1208.761] (II) NVIDIA(0): Virtual screen size determined to be 1920 x 1200


Also for your question in your xorg.conf the relevant stuff is to have 2 sections each for Monitor, Device and Screen. So something like this in your case
(stripped all the non-essential parts, the other stuff at the top for serverflags, extensions and modules you can keep.)

Code: Select all
Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "monitor1_nvidia"
    VendorName "Iiyama"
    ModelName "Iiyama Prolite E2607WS"
    HorizSync 29-81
    VertRefresh 55.0-76.0
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "monitor2_intel"
    VendorName "CTX"
    ModelName "CTX VL700"
    HorizSync 30.0-65.0
    VertRefresh 50.0-120.0
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "device1_nvidia"
    VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce 8100 to GeForce 415"
    Driver "nvidia"
    BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
    Option "DPMS"
    Option "DynamicTwinView" "false"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "device2_intel"
    VendorName "Intel Corporation"
    BoardName "Intel 810 and later"
    Driver "intel"
    BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
    Option "DPMS"
    Option "RandRRotation" "on"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "screen1_nvidia"
    Device "device1_nvidia"
    Monitor "monitor1_nvidia"
   DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection "Display"
    Depth 24
    EndSubSection
EndSection


Section "Screen"
    Identifier "screen2_intel"
    Device "device2_intel"
    Monitor "monitor2_intel"
    #Option "Rotate" "ccw"
   DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection "Display"
    Depth 24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "layout1"
    Screen "screen1_nvidia" 0 0
    Screen "screen2_intel" RightOf "screen1_nvidia"
EndSection
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Re: Dual graphics card & dual monitor, right one rotated

Postby prn183 » Jan 10th, '21, 18:39

Thanks.
In the mean time I got a little further by trying the Mageia-8 Live DVD:

    When using the proprietary driver only the NVidia + Iiyama 1920x1200 screen is activated, whatever I try in drakconf.
    If I select the non-proprietary NVidia driver, Mageia-8 uses both monitors out-of-the-box with a virtual screen extended over both. The right screen is (physically) rotated clockwise; playing around with xrandr:
    Code: Select all
    [live@localhost ~]$ xrandr --listmonitors
    Monitors: 2
     0: +*VGA-2 1920/550x1200/344+0+0  VGA-2
     1: +VGA1 1280/340x1024/270+1920+0  VGA1
    [live@localhost ~]$ xrandr --output VGA1 --rotate left
    gets me a "properly rotated" right screen, that is, the mouse cursor can be seamlessly moved from one screen to the other and behaves as expected, but windows, even parts of windows divided over both screens, still display rotated on the right screen. They seem to rotate either 0 or 180 degrees, nothing in between.
Well, one (important) step further.

In my original post I wrote that there was something to sacrifice, that must have been speed of the proprietary driver. The Nvidia 230 card is an old beast, I know.

Is there a way to somehow "extract" an xorg.conf from this Live DVD? there's no xorg.conf in /etc/X11 so it looks like Mageia-8 runs with all default settings.

Anyway, I suppose this implies reinstalling / "re-setting-up" the graphics stuff in drakconf.
Hmmm, I remember that that also took a bit of manual copying over driver stuff in /etc or /lib, I'd have to check, but I do remember those things didn't work automagically, even on an otherwise fairly plain vanilla Mageia-7 installation.

I also have to check if this non-proprietary driver sufficiently supports VMWare Horizon Client (absolutely indispensable for my work in these covid-19 times), IIRC that has issues with too low a screen bit depth (24 bits was the minimum) and/or maybe the non-proprietary driver as well.
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Re: Dual graphics card & dual monitor, right one rotated

Postby prn183 » Jan 10th, '21, 22:22

As to your latest post:
Yeah, I noted the lacking section and added it.

Till now I got it working somewhat but with a few problems.
1. The nouveau kernel driver won't load automatically, I have to modprobe it manually upon each boot. Guided by the archwiki site I searched but couldn't find it blacklisted on my system. I entered '/sbin/modprobe nouveau" in modprobe.conf but that didn't help either.
2. Without xorg.conf the right screen "works" (I see an X cursor) but if I move the cursor to that screen it is "captured" and I need to Ctrl-Alt-Bksp and restart X to be able to continue work.
3. I generated an xorg.conf in runmode 3 (Xorg -configure) but that doesn't work very well. After 'startx' there's a 1920x1200 splash screen and after a split second a 1200x1024 splash screen on top of it, instead of on the right monitor. Once X is up and running the situation is as in 2. above.

Some good news is that VMWare works with the Nouveau driver ==> I can at least work from home.

Thank you for your help & suggestions so far.

Well, hopefully later this week I have more time to work on it :)
Or maybe I'd better wait for Mageia-8 ...
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Re: Dual graphics card & dual monitor, right one rotated

Postby doktor5000 » Jan 10th, '21, 22:57

You can just switch to the nouveau driver via drakx11, there shouldn't be anything else to do manually.
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Re: Dual graphics card & dual monitor, right one rotated

Postby prn183 » Jan 13th, '21, 18:29

In the mean time I got a little further (each day I can devote a little time to it).

drakx11 doesn't help with automatically inserting the nouveau driver; I consistently have to modprobe it manually after each boot.

I tried Mageia-8 beta live DVD's (Gnome and Plasma) and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS live.

On Ubuntu 20.04 both monitors work perfectly almost out of the box. In the Settings|Video menu I only have to rotate the right monitor and all is well.

With Mageia-8 Gnome (on which I'm typing this) it also works, be it that the screen contents aren't shown on the right monitor - it's completely black. I experimented a bit with shifting windows partly onto the right monitor and indeed clicking around near the expected location of a close button makes the windows close; similarly for panning and resizing (I can see the cursor changing shape near the invisible window borders :) ). Fiddling with e.g., xrandr --fbmm etc didn't help.

Mageia-8 Plasma is less cooperative. Rotation works, that is, the cursor moves seamlessly in and out of the right monitor, but again I hit the limitation that the lower third part of the rotated right window isn't "active" (cursor moves there and is visible but no screen contents are shown) and window panes seem oblivious to rotation - it's either normal or inverted but no right or left rotation conforming to xrandr's settings. Go figure.

The fact that is all works on Ubuntu but not on Mageia is ominous. Also the fact that with the proprietary driver the right monitor is always inactive. Should I file a bug report?
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Re: Dual graphics card & dual monitor, right one rotated

Postby doktor5000 » Jan 13th, '21, 18:37

prn183 wrote:drakx11 doesn't help with automatically inserting the nouveau driver; I consistently have to modprobe it manually after each boot.

That shouldn't be the case at all. But ... did you maybe manually install the proprietary nvidia driver at some point?
If that's the case then you would need to remove the blacklist file for nouveau below /etc/modprobe.d which the nvidia installer puts there.

prn183 wrote:Also the fact that with the proprietary driver the right monitor is always inactive. Should I file a bug report?

Well, there's nothing that we can do about the proprietary driver, so that would probably be pointless.
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Re: Dual graphics card & dual monitor, right one rotated

Postby prn183 » Jan 13th, '21, 19:19

.. remove the blacklist file for nouveau below /etc/modprobe.d ...

THAT was a good one! found it in 00_mageia-prime.conf. Thanks!

And my suggestion for bug report was about the ineffective screen contents, not about the NVidia proprietary driver :-) I'm well aware that NVidia isn't too cooperative ...

In the mean time I found there's not much functional difference between the Mageia-8 Gnome and Plasma Live DVD's. Turns out that after "xrandr --output VGA1 --rotate left" the only difference is that in Plasma there's some sort of background picture shown on the right monitor and it does show some window contents over that background, where in Gnome the right screen is completely black (but the mouse cursor does show on apparently the proper location).

Attached is a pic of the Plasma desktop. On the right (rotated) scree the cursor is shown at the location of the top right corner of where the Dolphn window should show up, while the window actually shows up left rotated on the "active" part of the screen.
So, is this worth a bug report? (I'm not eager, but it might help me at some time and perhaps others. Esp. as Ubuntu gets it right).
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Re: Dual graphics card & dual monitor, right one rotated

Postby prn183 » Jan 13th, '21, 19:21

BTW, thanks for your prompt answers, doktor5000 :-)
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Re: Dual graphics card & dual monitor, right one rotated

Postby doktor5000 » Jan 13th, '21, 21:54

Well, a bug report probably won't help, as this is more related to your hardware / monitor combinations. A bug report should always be reproducible, and if this cannot be easily reproduced by somebody else, then the chances of this getting fixed are close to zero.

Apart from that, the contents of the monitor on the right looks to be 180° rotated (ignoring the fact that the monitor itself is physically rotated 90°).
Also seems the monitor on the right might need a modeline so that the content matches the actual display region. You probably have to play around with that.
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Re: Dual graphics card & dual monitor, right one rotated

Postby prn183 » Jan 13th, '21, 23:06

Modeline? sure I can try.
Earlier on I had a dedicated CTX PV700 monitor section with (AFAIK) proper modelines in xorg.conf but during the most recent tries it all seemed to behave better without it. Too bad a tool like xvidune only work on the primary monitor

As to rotation, xrandr rotated the *cursor movements* 90 degrees, as desired. As outlined in the previous post, app windows do shift properly onto the right screen (that is, the mouse cursor picks up screen borders at proper positions), currently it's the screen *contents* that don't behave.

I may be missing yet other xorg.conf options (virtual screen size? framebuffer sizes? I don't know). Also some vague reminicenses of shifting the right monitor's contents up or down in some xorg.conf section pop up but I think arandr can take care of those.

The HW may not be very new, sure, yet it does work with another distro (and (of course) Windows). Plus, it worked in Mageia-5 as written in my OP. IOW, I don't give up yet :)
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Re: Dual graphics card & dual monitor, right one rotated

Postby prn183 » Feb 12th, '21, 20:15

After a bit of distraction back to topic :-)
Attached are screenshots of

* (upper) Mageia 7 booting into runmode 3 - both monitor active, the right one apparently improperly scaled

* (lower) after starting Xorg through startx. It looks like one screen "meant for the right monitor" actually ends up on the left monitor. Window movement & mouse cursor behave differently, when dragging a window the mouse cursor stays in the limits of the smaller image but otherwise the mouse cursor can be used to click on buttons anywhere on the screen. The right monitor is inactive.

MageiaDualScreens.jpg
MageiaDualScreens.jpg (120.3 KiB) Viewed 2287 times


I'll also attach Xorg.log.0. It struck me that at the end of the log I see several identical sections of re-initializing the main (left) screen. In the attached log 4 times, but usually twice.

As I already wrote before, Ubuntu and Kubuntu 20.04 work well (Ubuntu w. Wayland, Kubuntu w. Xorg) although it looks like Plasma can't duplicate the background image on the right monitor, otherwise both screens are "unified". However I like Mageia better, IMHO (K)Ubuntu tries to think too much for me, it's almost like MacOSX or Windows :-(
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