Dual display with displayLink and nvidia?

[trubshac]

Hi

I hope that someone has already done what I'm trying to do, and can therefore help me.

I've just purchased a Rextron VCUA-20 which is a USB to VGA adapter using the displayLink system. It appears in my system as:

Bus 001 Device 006: ID 17e9:0133 Newnham Research

I also have a normal nvidia card:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G84 [GeForce 8400 GS] (rev a1)

This is my xorg.conf:

Section "ServerFlags"
	Option "Xinerama" "true"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Server Layout"
    Screen      0  "BigScreen" 0 0
    Screen      1  "SmallScreen" LeftOf "BigScreen"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load           "glx"
EndSection

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

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "BigMonitor"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "SmallMonitor"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "BigDevice"
    Driver         "nvidia"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "SmallDevice"
    Option         "fbdev" "/dev/fb0"	
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "BigScreen"
    Device         "BigDevice"
    Monitor        "BigMonitor"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Modes      "nvidia-auto-select"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "SmallScreen"
    Device         "SmallDevice"
    Monitor        "SmallMonitor"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Modes      "1280x1024"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

I'm running Ubuntu 9.10 on an Intel Dual-Core E5400.

I am trying to get the desktop running across both displays, but have had little success yet. My nvidia display (BigDisplay in xorg) runs the gnome desktop just fine. My USB display (SmallDisplay in xorg) shows just a blank screen. I do however know that appropriate USB drivers etc have been loaded because when I shutdown, the terminal display output appears on the USB display.

The only reference to displayLink I can find in dmesg is:

[   15.184409] DisplayLink device attached
[   15.184723] ret control msg 0: 4 0500fffffff0

The only reference I can find to the USB display within /var/log/Xorg.0.log is where it echoes the configuration that it is using:

(==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"
(==) ServerLayout "Server Layout"
(**) |-->Screen "BigScreen" (0)
(**) |   |-->Monitor "BigMonitor"
(**) |   |-->Device "BigDevice"
(**) |-->Screen "SmallScreen" (1)
(**) |   |-->Monitor "SmallMonitor"
(**) |   |-->Device "SmallDevice"
(**) |-->Input Device "Keyboard0"
(**) |-->Input Device "Mouse0"
(**) Option "Xinerama" "true"
(==) Automatically adding devices
(==) Automatically enabling devices
(**) Xinerama: enabled

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I might try changing to get this working please?

[number nine]

It's still early days for DisplayLink USB graphics support in Linux so you might have more luck posting to the libdlo mailing list where most of the developers are:

http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libdlo/

Also:
http://displaylink.org

[trubshac]

More information:

When I have booted up, and logged in, my normal gnome desktop is shown on my nvidia display, and my USB display is blank.
If I press <Ctrl>+<Alt>+0..6, then my nvidia display goes blank, and my USB display shows the relevant tty console where I can login and work normally.
When I press <Ctrl>+<Alt>+7, my USB display remains as it was, and my nvidia display restores the normal gnome desktop.
I'm unsure of the significance of this! Does this information help anyone diagnose what may be wrong with my configuration?

I read in http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1323155 that rectaganol thinks it may be a problem with fbcon taking over the device so that X cannot. Can anyone help please?

[pyro2927]

trubshac, did you ever figure out a solution? I am having the exact same problem as you.

[trubshac]

No I haven't yet It's shelved for the moment, but please post what you did if you manage to get it working.

[Mulchman]

I've had some luck getting Ubuntu 9.04 (32 bit) & Ubuntu 9.10 (32 bit) to work my my Sewell USB External Video Card adapter.

I documented a lot of my progress on my blog. You'll want udlfb from git (git clone http://git.plugable.com/webdav/udlfb) and xf86-video-displaylink from this package. (The latter package contains a udlfb library but it's old - you want the udlfb from git.)

The hardest part is putting together the xorg.conf... I can try and help with issues but am far from an expert in this matter.