ATI Dual Head with KDE 4 - Black Screen

English Hardware
#1

First of all, congratulations on the OpenSuSE 11. I’m impressed with the looks and how everything works well out of the box… well, almost everything.

I have an ATI Radeon x1050 card with 256Mb of memory and used OpenSuSE 10.3 with KDE 3.5 in a Dual Head setup. Hardware acceleration worked fine on both screens.

I decided to do a fresh install of OpenSuSE 11 with KDE 4.1 on my root partition. Everything worked fine with both screens working on a xinerama configuration however the free radeon driver was installed and I had no hardware acceleration:

fglrxinfo
display: :0.0  screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: Mesa project: www.mesa3d.org
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa GLX Indirect
OpenGL version string: 1.4 (2.1 Mesa 7.0.3)

I installed the newest ATI driver (first I downloaded it and later I tried via the ATI repository).

As soon as I booted the computer I had hardware acceleration but my displays were in a clone configuration. What’s the point of having two displays that are the mirror of each other anyway? So I tried to force the Xinerama via Yast and rebooted.

My left screen was ok but my right screen was black. I tried to use the xorg.conf of my old OpenSuSE 10.3 system but this time I got a white screen on the right monitor with X as my mouse pointer.

Then I went to the first xorg.conf with the radeon driver since that was the configuration working best so far and changed the driver from “radeon” to “fglrx”. Same problem: only one screen working and the other one black.

I changed back to “radeon” and now I have both screens working fine but without hardware acceleration. On the last attempt I followed all the steps on the troubleshooting session of ATI - openSUSE but had no success. Still stuck with the black screen.

It’s not a problem with the card or the driver since it was working fine on my OpenSuSE 10.3 setup.

Help please!! Why are ATI cards always such a pain to setup in Linux? I have another computer with an NVIDIA card and Ubuntu and everything is so much easier!!

#2

Btw this is my xorg.conf:

# /.../
# SaX generated X11 config file
# Created on: 2008-08-06T11:37:11+1000.
#
# Version: 8.1
# Contact: Marcus Schaefer <sax@suse.de>, 2005
# Contact: SaX-User list <https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/sax-users>
#
# Automatically generated by [ISaX] (8.1)
# PLEASE DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE!
#

Section "Files"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/local"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/URW"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Speedo"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/PEX"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/cyrillic"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latin2/misc:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latin2/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latin2/100dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latin2/Type1"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latin7/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/baekmuk:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/japanese:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/kwintv"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/truetype"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/uni:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/CID"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ucs/misc:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ucs/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ucs/100dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/hellas/misc:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/hellas/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/hellas/100dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/hellas/Type1"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc/sgi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/xtest"
  FontPath     "/opt/kde3/share/fonts"
  InputDevices "/dev/gpmdata"
  InputDevices "/dev/input/mice"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
  Option       "AllowMouseOpenFail" "on"
  Option       "ZapWarning" "on"
EndSection

Section "Module"
  Load         "glx"
  Load         "type1"
  Load         "extmod"
  Load         "dbe"
  Load         "freetype"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver       "kbd"
  Identifier   "Keyboard[0]"
  Option       "Protocol" "Standard"
  Option       "XkbLayout" "us"
  Option       "XkbModel" "microsoftpro"
  Option       "XkbRules" "xfree86"
EndSection


Section "InputDevice"
  Driver       "mouse"
  Identifier   "Mouse[1]"
  Option       "Buttons" "5"
  Option       "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
  Option       "Name" "Logitech M-UV69a Optical Wheel Mouse"
  Option       "Protocol" "explorerps/2"
  Option       "Vendor" "Sysp"
  Option       "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection


Section "Monitor"
  DisplaySize  376 301
  HorizSync    30-83
  Identifier   "Monitor[0]"
  ModelName    "LG ELECTRONICS L1919S"
  Option       "DPMS"
  Option       "PreferredMode" "1280x1024"
  VendorName   "GSM"
  VertRefresh  43-75
  UseModes     "Modes[0]"
EndSection


Section "Modes"
  Identifier   "Modes[0]"
  Modeline 	"1280x1024" 108 1280 1328 1440 1688 1024 1025 1028 1066 +hsync +vsync
EndSection


Section "Screen"
  DefaultDepth 24
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      15
    Modes      "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1280x720" "1024x768" "1280x600" "1024x600" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480" 
  EndSubSection
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      16
    Modes      "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1280x720" "1024x768" "1280x600" "1024x600" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480" 
  EndSubSection
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      24
    Modes      "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1280x720" "1024x768" "1280x600" "1024x600" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480" 
  EndSubSection
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      8
    Modes      "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1280x720" "1024x768" "1280x600" "1024x600" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480" 
  EndSubSection
  Device       "Device[0]"
  Identifier   "Screen[0]"
  Monitor      "Monitor[0]"
EndSection


Section "Device"
  BoardName    "RADEON X550"
  BusID        "1:0:0"
  Driver       "radeon"
# Driver       "fglrx"
  Identifier   "Device[0]"
  Option       "SaXDualHead"
  Option       "IgnoreEDID"
  Option       "MergedFB"
  Option       "GARTSize" "32"
  Option       "SaXDualMonitorVendor" "GSM"
  Option       "SaXDualVSync" "50-75"
  Option       "CRT2Position" "RightOf"
  Option       "MonitorLayout" "AUTOCRT,AUTO"
  Option       "CRT2VRefresh" "50-75"
  Option       "MetaModes" "1280x1024,1280x1024;1280x960,1280x960;1280x800,1280x800;1152x864,1152x864;1280x768,1280x768;1280x720,1280x720;1024x768,1024x768;1280x600,1280x600;1024x600,1024x600;800x600,800x600;768x576,768x576;640x480,640x480"
  Option       "SaXDualOrientation" "RightOf"
  Option       "SaXDualResolution" "1280x1024"
  Option       "CRT2HSync" "30-83"
  Option       "SaXDualMode" "Xinerama"
  Option       "SaXDualHSync" "30-83"
  Option       "SaXDualMonitorModel" "LG ELECTRONICS L1919S"
  Screen       0
  VendorName   "ATI"
EndSection



Section "ServerLayout"
  Identifier   "Layout[all]"
  InputDevice  "Keyboard[0]" "CoreKeyboard"
  InputDevice  "Mouse[1]" "CorePointer"
  Option       "Clone" "off"
  Option       "Xinerama" "off"
  Screen       "Screen[0]"
EndSection


Section "DRI"
    Group      "video"
    Mode       0660
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
EndSection
#3

anyone???

#4

Sorry, no help here - just chiming in to say that I’m also having this pretty much exact problem. Radeon HD3870, latest proprietary ATI drivers, dual head setup (as generated by aticonfig). I’ve got a left monitor (screen 0) that’s working, but the right one is black - although I can move my cursor into it, and it transforms into an X.

Annoyingly enough, any attempt to configure dual head via SaX2 results in a X crash.

xorg.conf:


# /.../
# SaX generated X11 config file
# Created on: 2008-08-17T15:29:09-0500.
#
# Version: 8.1
# Contact: Marcus Schaefer <sax@suse.de>, 2005
# Contact: SaX-User list <https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/sax-users>
#
# Automatically generated by [SaX2] (8.1)
# PLEASE DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE!
#

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "Layout[all]"
	Screen      0  "Screen[0]" 0 0
	Screen         "aticonfig-Screen[0]-1" RightOf "Screen[0]"
	InputDevice    "Keyboard[0]" "CoreKeyboard"
	InputDevice    "Mouse[1]" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
	InputDevices   "/dev/gpmdata"
	InputDevices   "/dev/input/mice"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/local"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/URW"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Speedo"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/PEX"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/cyrillic"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latin2/misc:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latin2/75dpi:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latin2/100dpi:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latin2/Type1"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latin7/75dpi:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/baekmuk:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/japanese:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/kwintv"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/truetype"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/uni:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/CID"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ucs/misc:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ucs/75dpi:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ucs/100dpi:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/hellas/misc:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/hellas/75dpi:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/hellas/100dpi:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/hellas/Type1"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc/sgi:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/xtest"
	FontPath     "/opt/kde3/share/fonts"
EndSection

Section "Module"
	Load  "dbe"
	Load  "type1"
	Load  "freetype"
	Load  "extmod"
	Load  "glx"
	Load  "dri"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
	Option	    "AIGLX" "on"
	Option	    "AllowMouseOpenFail" "on"
	Option	    "IgnoreABI" "on"
	Option	    "ZapWarning" "on"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Keyboard[0]"
	Driver      "kbd"
	Option	    "Protocol" "Standard"
	Option	    "XkbLayout" "us"
	Option	    "XkbModel" "microsoftpro"
	Option	    "XkbRules" "xfree86"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Mouse[1]"
	Driver      "mouse"
	Option	    "Buttons" "12"
	Option	    "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
	Option	    "Name" "Logitech USB Receiver"
	Option	    "Protocol" "explorerps/2"
	Option	    "Vendor" "Sysp"
	Option	    "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "Modes"
	Identifier     "Modes[0]"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "Monitor[0]"
	VendorName   "DEL"
	ModelName    "DELL 2408WFP"
	UseModes     "Modes[0]"
	DisplaySize  519	324
	HorizSync    30.0 - 83.0
	VertRefresh  43.0 - 76.0
	Option	    "CalcAlgorithm" "XServerPool"
	Option	    "DPMS"
	Option	    "PreferredMode" "1920x1200"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-1"
	Option	    "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
	Option	    "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
	Option	    "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "Device[0]"
	Driver      "fglrx"
	VendorName  "ATI"
	BoardName   "ATI Radeon HD 3870 (RV670 9501)"
	Option	    "Capabilities" "0x00000000"
	Option	    "VideoOverlay" "on"
	Option	    "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
	Option	    "FSAAEnable" "off"
	Option	    "FSAAScale" "0"
	Option	    "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
	Option      "KernelModuleParm" "agplock=0"
	BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]-1"
	Driver      "fglrx"
	BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
	Screen      1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen[0]"
	Device     "Device[0]"
	Monitor    "Monitor[0]"
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection "Display"
		Depth     15
		Modes    "1920x1200" "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600"
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Depth     16
		Modes    "1920x1200" "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600"
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Depth     24
		Modes    "1920x1200" "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600"
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Depth     8
		Modes    "1920x1200" "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600"
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-1"
	Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]-1"
	Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-1"
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
	Group        "video"
	Mode         0660
EndSection

I’ve not tweaked it much at all…just happy enough to have the thing finally working period; it was a bit of an uphill battle.

#5

Since you’re getting an ‘X’ for a mouse and black screen on the second
monitor, sounds like ‘dual head’ is not being set up properly. (‘X’ cursor
indicates no desktop manager active for that screen)

You might try enabling ‘xinerama’, as that is supposed to make the two
monitors into a single really wide (or tall) one.

Another thing to try is to make SaX2 not read in existing configuration.
Make it start anew…:

sax2 -r

will cause it to restart the detection routines and create a whole new
xorg.conf file. This might help. Remember xinerama.

Loni

–
L R Nix
lornix@lornix.com

#6

Thanks!! Setting the XINERAMA option to on made my Harware Acceleration work again and now I got rid of the black screen.

However…

On my setup with the RADEON driver and no hardware acceleration I had 2 screens. So I could setup 2 task managers on 2 menu bars (one of each screen) to show windows of just a particular screen. Also when I maximized a window, it only maximize to one of the screens.

With the XINERAMA setup it’s like my 2 screens were merged into a big wide one. If I maximize a window it takes the area of both screens. Also I have one big menu bar with one task manager that shows all windows, doesn’t matter if they are on one screen on the other. The setting to show windows from just one screen doesn’t work even if I create a second task manager.

On my previous setup it was easier to organize my windows between the 2 screens on KDE 4.1. It was like I had 2 different SuSE instances, one on each screen. It worked fine on KDE 3.5 with hardware acceleration.

The XINERAMA setting helped but it’s not an ideal setup…

#7

On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:36:03 GMT
edvar <edvar@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:

>
> Thanks!! Setting the XINERAMA option to on made my Harware Acceleration
> work again and now I got rid of the black screen.

Great…

>
> However…

But… {sigh}

> On my setup with the RADEON driver and no hardware acceleration I had 2
> screens. So I could setup 2 task managers on 2 menu bars (one of each
> screen) to show windows of just a particular screen. Also when I
> maximized a window, it only maximize to one of the screens.

Ya, that’s pretty nice, NVidia supports Twinview, similar to that, but also
similar to Xinerama.

> With the XINERAMA setup it’s like my 2 screens were merged into a big
> wide one. If I maximize a window it takes the area of both screens.
> Also I have one big menu bar with one task manager that shows all
> windows, doesn’t matter if they are on one screen on the other. The
> setting to show windows from just one screen doesn’t work even if I
> create a second task manager.

Yup, that’s what Xinerama does… it makes your window manager (KDE/GNOME/etc)
think you have one really wide window. You kind of have to take that into
account if you use Xinerama and adjust for it. (or to it…)

> On my previous setup it was easier to organize my windows between the 2
> screens on KDE 4.1. It was like I had 2 different SuSE instances, one on
> each screen. It worked fine on KDE 3.5 with hardware acceleration.

I would like to stress the point that while we are ALL looking forward to KDE
4.1, it is not YET to the level at which KDE 3.5.9 is currently. There will
be bugs, problems, issues, … and I imagine some things either won’t work,
or won’t work as you’d expect.

Although, mingus725, was more eloquent on August 13th, 2008, when he wrote:

“KDE 4 is still very young. It is recommended only for experienced users
who can hack their way around problems. If you have not upgraded from the
installed 4.0 to 4.1, you can try that; 4.1 is much better. But still, it is
undergoing active development and at times things don’t work right. You would
just have to see. The better bet would be to install KDE 3.5.9; you can do
that and leave KDE 4.1 installed, too. KDE 3.5.9 is very mature and stable.
You could then use 3.5.9 as your primary gui, and occasionally update your
4.1 and check it out; when your 4.1 is stable, you can switch to it as your
primary. Many very experienced openSUSE users are sticking with 3.5.9 until
4.x has had time to mature.”

> The XINERAMA setting helped but it’s not an ideal setup…

I’m sorry it doesn’t resolve your problem. It did give you two screens
back though.

Loni

–
L R Nix
lornix@lornix.com

#8

It did solve the problem (in a way), Loni, and I really appreciate your help.

I understand KDE 4.1 is not there yet… But it’s almost there! I’m really impressed with the work the developers have done. In my opinion is a serious competitor to the Vista GUI, sometimes better. Maybe one day it’ll be as nice as the Mac OS GUI.

I used KDE 3.5 at work (OpenSuSE) and Gnome at home (Ubuntu) for quite some time. A couple of months ago I decided to give it a try to KDE 4 at home. I’ve been using it since version 4.05. Went through the sometimes painful path of using KDE 4.1 Beta 1, Beta 2 and RC1. I was very pleased with the final version. It’s very slick, looks great but of course it has its problems.

I thought about the pros and conns and decided to upgrade my box at work to OpenSuSE 11 with KDE 4.1. So far I’m very happy with the results. It’s very stable compared to the previous versions… and, hey, KDE 4.0 didn’t even support dual screens properly on the first releases. Now at least it works. It needs a little polishing but it’s getting there. Anyway so far I prefer it to the 3.5.