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EclipseOTO
September 12th, 2009, 08:16 PM
Hey,

So, I just did a fresh install of ubuntu on my other desktop which has two graphics cards, 9800 GT's to be precise. It wouldn't work unless I took one out, so I did so and everything was grand. I then decided that I had two cards and by god I wanted to use both of them, so I did some research and found this article on how to put in both:

http://rmarcus.wordpress.com/2009/02/02/ubuntu-with-two-graphics-cards/
(https://webmail.williams.edu/wm/mail/fetch.html?urlid=g6cba536acb876b0c944472d365f5ecfc ckijgplh5l&url=http%3A%2F%2Frmarcus.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F02 %2F02%2Fubuntu-with-two-graphics-cards%2F)


The system doesn't make it to the log in screen. Instead it just boots to a blank screen where the mouse is a black X. I tried taking one of the cards out again, didn't help. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Pete

khelben1979
September 12th, 2009, 08:40 PM
I think the problem is that your x server configuration is configured to only use one graphic card. Attach your /etc/X11/xorg.conf to this thread.

I assume the cards are linked using S.L.I. Have you tried this functionality with Windows just so you know there's not a conflict in hardware?

EclipseOTO
September 12th, 2009, 10:12 PM
Yeah, I'm positive the SLI works, I'd been using it with windows for near 4 months when my windows 7 beta expired. Attached is my xorg.conf

EclipseOTO
September 13th, 2009, 05:21 AM
I forgot to mention, when I boot the computer, I can't get into the terminal either. When I press ctrl+alt+f1 theres just a flashing underscore in the upper left corner of the screen.

Thanks,
Pete

dagrump
September 13th, 2009, 03:26 PM
Well it would appear that you are running 3 monitors from your xorg file, is that the case?
Looks like Device0 is an on-board chip or something.
This is the xorg.conf from my machine w/ 9.04 & a pair of 9800s in SLI.
That would be xorg1, the xorg.txt is from a box running 9.04 w/ a pair of 9600s in SLI.
Now I'm only running a single monitor on the boxes, so you need to modify your file to reflect multiple monitors, if that is the case.

EclipseOTO
September 13th, 2009, 05:39 PM
I'm only running a single monitor, so I replaced my xorg with the xorg1 file, renaming it to xorg and putting it in the appropriate spot. This didn't help however. Is there something else I should add?

Thanks,
Pete

dagrump
September 14th, 2009, 03:31 AM
Oh, well I'm not sure if that's the way to do it but, if it's no worse.
I think I'd try "lspci" to check the BusID of your graphics cards. I don't have any idea where the xorg file you were using came from, but I think you need to allow the installed drivers to create one.
Then you will need to edit it to designate your primary card, using the BusID line & Option "SLI" "SFR" line.
There are other render options, but I don't remember what they all are.

EclipseOTO
September 16th, 2009, 09:16 PM
So, I fixed up some things, and now I don't get an error of any sort, but all that shows up is a black screen. No mouse, no underscore, so I'm not sure what that means. I tried the other monitor ports on the graphics cards too and that didn't work, they just said "no signal" when not in the original. I can still access the ctrl + alt + F1 though. Sigh...

EclipseOTO
September 16th, 2009, 09:18 PM
Actually I lied, I get an "(EE) NVIDIA(GPU-1): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA graphics device!" when I change back to the terminal. Interesting.

EclipseOTO
September 16th, 2009, 11:14 PM
'nother update:

According to the log file, it's not running SLI because it picks up three gpus and doesn't like that, 2 being the 9800 GT's and the third being the one on the motherboard. How can I work around this problem?