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Thread: 3 Monitors, Ubuntu 12.04, Gnome 3, 2 nvidia cards, WITH xrandr or xinerama?

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  1. #1
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    3 Monitors, Ubuntu 12.04, Gnome 3, 2 nvidia cards, WITH xrandr or xinerama?

    Ok. I have been banging my head against the wall for over a week now trying to get 3 monitors to work.

    I have:

    1 - Nvidia 8600 GT 512MB PCIEx16

    1 - Nvidia GT 240 1GB PCIEx16

    They are not running in SLI (obviously). I have tried to use everything from tutorials to a few templates, all the way up to nvidia-settings, etc etc etc.. From what I hear, Xinerama doesnt like gnome 3 because of the compositing, although I have read a lot about using Xrandr instead, and getting the compositing working, but alas, I cannot. It always either crashes X and I have to replace the xorg.conf with my backup, or it defaults to the gnome-classic desktop, and on top of that, when it does default, it keeps adding more and more panels.

    Basically, I want to be able to use all 3 monitors (yes, just like in windows) to drag and drop from different windows.

    I have xorg-edit, but I am still not too sure on how to set this up? Is there any way to:

    A> Get compositing working with 3 monitors, 2 nvidia cards, xinerama, and gnome 3?

    or

    B>Use twinview with 3 monitors (I have heard it can be done by manually editing xorg.conf)

    or

    C>Set up Xrandr to draw all 3 monitors with compositing.

    or

    D>Use separate X for each monitor, and be able to use gnome with compositing, as well as drag between all 3

    or

    E>ANYTHING. lol. I just want this to work.

    Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated. BTW, I am running an ubuntu mini install with gnome. Everything works great but this. I can run it fine with 2 monitors and compositing, but not with 3.

    Also, what is the best GUI tool for editing xorg.conf? Im not finding anything that is up to date at all, and also is understandable by humans. haha. Im actually an engineer by trade, and have been working with computers a LONG time, but this xorg.conf stuff is really confusing the crap out of me. lol

    Thanks!
    Teardrop on the fire.... Fearless on my breath....

  2. #2
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    Feb 2009
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    Re: 3 Monitors, Ubuntu 12.04, Gnome 3, 2 nvidia cards, WITH xrandr or xinerama?

    People use and recommend Nvidia drivers because they give good performance, however, they don't play nice with native tools. I cannot even set two monitors on one video card with anything other than Nvidia-settings.

    Backup your xorg.conf (better safe then sorry). Then run:
    Code:
    gksudo nvidia-settings
    now you can use the "save to Xorg configuration file" option in the Display menu. This is your only hope of getting anything Nvidia to work and your changes will persist after rebooting

    Some of the changes require you to reboot Xorg, but if you don't save the changes to xorg.conf then nothing will happen, and you can only save the changes if you have permission to write over xorg.conf, and only the super user can write to xorg.conf, hence you need "gksudo".

  3. #3
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    Re: 3 Monitors, Ubuntu 12.04, Gnome 3, 2 nvidia cards, WITH xrandr or xinerama?

    ?????

    Umm, yeah. Those are the basics I have been over that. nvidia-settings does not give an option that works with compiz/graphics, 3 monitors, and nvidia running on gnome 3. You have to basically edit the xorg.conf by hand, which I have done. I need a more advanced answer, as the solution is not a point-and-click one. That would be sweet if there were, though.
    Teardrop on the fire.... Fearless on my breath....

  4. #4
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    Distro
    Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin

    Re: 3 Monitors, Ubuntu 12.04, Gnome 3, 2 nvidia cards, WITH xrandr or xinerama?

    In retrospect you might have been better off posting in Multimedia & Video where maybe one of the video gurus would have been more likely to help.

    What does your current xorg.conf look like?

    Does the Nvidia settings gui show you both video cards and all three monitors? If so I would think you should be able to set up two monitors on TwinView on one card and the third screen on the second card as a separate X monitor. I think it is Xinerama that breaks compositing but not TwinView, but I'm ready to be corrected.

    It sounds like you already have links to the Nvidia settings:
    http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/...ettings.1.html
    http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/...xconfig.1.html

    I was able to get dual monitors working with the Nouveau driver:
    Code:
    ## HP TX2000 tablet PC xf86-video-nouveau driver dual monitor xorg.conf
    ## 00:05.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation C51 [GeForce Go 6150] (rev a2)
    
    Section "Device"
        Identifier     "GeForce_Go_6150"
        Driver         "nouveau"
        VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
        BusID          "PCI:0:5:0"
        Option         "RandRRotation" "on"      # enable rotation
    EndSection
    
    Section "Monitor"
        Identifier     "LVDS-1"
        VendorName     "HP"
        ModelName      "Unknown"
        HorizSync       24.0 - 94.0
        VertRefresh     50.0 - 76.0
        Option         "PreferredMode" "1280x800"
    EndSection
    
    Section "Monitor"
        Identifier     "VGA-1"
        VendorName     "HP"
        ModelName      "HP_2310m"
        Option         "RightOf"       "LVDS-1"
    #    Option         "LeftOf"        "LVDS-1"
    #    Option         "Above"         "LVDS-1"
    #    Option         "Below"         "LVDS-1"
        Option         "PreferredMode" "1920x1080"
    EndSection
    
    Section "Screen"
        Identifier     "Screen0"
        Device         "GeForce_Go_6150"
        Monitor        "LVDS-1"
        DefaultDepth    24
        SubSection     "Display"
            Depth           24
            Virtual         3200 1080
    #        Virtual         4096 4096            # GeForce Go 6150 max.
        EndSubSection
    EndSection
    Don't know if that is a way to go for you. You'd need a separate Device section for the other card. And a Monitor section for the third monitor. Then a Screen section specifying the second card and third monitor. Don't know if at that point you'd need a "ServerLayout" section specifying the layout of the 3 monitors. Maybe not, that seems to have become optional.

    I had to disable the XrandR plugin for the gnome-settings-daemon because the default mirror setting interferes. I guess the Nvidia gui had been hiding that little issue. First install dconf-editor:
    Code:
    sudo apt-get install dconf-editor
    then open it. Now navigate to org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xrandr and uncheck the active box for the xrandr plug-in. Your xrandr static configuration should no longer be overwritten when you restart.

  5. #5
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    Re: 3 Monitors, Ubuntu 12.04, Gnome 3, 2 nvidia cards, WITH xrandr or xinerama?

    Yes. All cards and displays are recognized in nvidia-settings, and yes, I can do it with twin view for 2 monitors and a 3rd X, but then I dont have the same type of access to that screen.

    Here is my xorg.con. Its from a brand new install on this computer, not configured for anything at all except for 1 monitor.

    # nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
    # nvidia-xconfig: version 304.51 (buildmeister@swio-display-x86-rhel47-08.nvidia.com) Tue Sep 18 18:26:36 PDT 2012

    Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "Layout0"
    Screen 0 "Screen0"
    InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    EndSection

    Section "Files"
    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 "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier "Keyboard0"
    Driver "kbd"
    EndSection

    Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "Monitor0"
    VendorName "Unknown"
    ModelName "Unknown"
    HorizSync 28.0 - 33.0
    VertRefresh 43.0 - 72.0
    Option "DPMS"
    EndSection

    Section "Device"
    Identifier "Device0"
    Driver "nvidia"
    VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
    EndSection

    Section "Screen"
    Identifier "Screen0"
    Device "Device0"
    Monitor "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection "Display"
    Depth 24
    EndSubSection
    EndSection
    Should I switch it to seperate x screens and show you the output then?

    I can post the output of what I tried to do earlier, if you want.

    Again, my cards are recognized, and I can get 2 monitors working just fine with twinview, but I need 3 monitors, that can all share windows (yes, just like in windows), and that has hardware acceleration for effects running on all monitors. Im pretty sure that I would need to custom write a xorg.conf file, but it would be fantastic if there was some sort of GUI for it.
    Teardrop on the fire.... Fearless on my breath....

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
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    Distro
    Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin

    Re: 3 Monitors, Ubuntu 12.04, Gnome 3, 2 nvidia cards, WITH xrandr or xinerama?

    As far as I know TwinView only handles two monitors.

    It looks like you might be able to get the setup you "want" if you enable TwinView for two monitors and the Xinerama for the third. Looks a bit daunting. See especially the last post: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1703524

    If that doesn't seem viable you could try asking on Nvidia specific forums. The Nvidia forums are apparently down due to a security breach. But for linux they link to here: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/foru...?s=&forumid=14 And the Phoronix one: http://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum...0-NVIDIA-Linux

  7. #7
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    Re: 3 Monitors, Ubuntu 12.04, Gnome 3, 2 nvidia cards, WITH xrandr or xinerama?

    Hi,

    Is this necrobumping? Sorry.

    Anyway, I supose you have fixed your setup, but if not, this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA#Mosaic_Mode seems to work.

    Regards

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Apr 2008
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    226

    Re: 3 Monitors, Ubuntu 12.04, Gnome 3, 2 nvidia cards, WITH xrandr or xinerama?

    Not all cards support Mosaic mode. Mine do not. You cannot run composite over multiple cards like this. It sucks, but its still the same. haha. I just gave up on it. Got tired of wasting my time.
    Teardrop on the fire.... Fearless on my breath....

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