I’m pretty new to OpenSuse (actually Linux in general for that matter), so I have a feeling this is more of a user error than anything else.
I have an ATi All-In-Wonder 9600xt and 2 Samsung SyncMaster 215tw’s, and I’ve just gone through what should have been an easy process. (YaST, Graphics Card and Monitor settings, Activate Dual Head in Xinerama mode and 3D Acceleration) When I get to testing it, though, the secondary monitor for a brief moment acknowledges an incoming signal, and then goes black, while a centering bracket shows up on the primary one. (Idk if that’s normal or not.)
They’re both set for 1680x1050 which is easily manageable.
In addition I have noticed that the system identifies my card as being an ATi RV350 AR. But it seems, after a little research, that it is in fact somehow related to my card, which probably makes this completely irrelevant to the matter at hand.
My best guess is that I just need to restart the graphics system as it said I need to do, but I couldn’t even figure out how to do that. Simply rebooting the computer doesn’t cut it apparently…
I had a similar (?) problem (in my other thread), where I found out that my screen was blanking because DPMS was enabled during the SaX2 configuration.
When I unchecked that box, the problem went away. I don’t know if that’ll work for you, but if it does then you’ve got the same problem as me (if not, then I’d suspect something more driver-related?).
Xinerama and 3D acceleration don’t go together. Not sure that’s the cause of your problems, and I don’t know about ATI cards but don’t they offer another method of combining two screens into one (like NVIDIA’s Twinview)?
You restart X by hitting Alt-CTRL-Backspace twice.
Hello again. Thanks for the help, but it seems to have gone from bad to worse.
Neither restarting X or messing with the DPMS has brought me any luck so far, so I thought that at least installing a proper driver couldn’t hurt. I was wrong.
After downloading it from the ATi website and what felt like an hour of learning how to use the terminal, I got it all set up, and tried testing the dual head. This time it failed and brought up an error dialog. I wish i could tell you what it said but from that point on, neither monitor will work.
they still work during the boot process and in failsafe mode though.
The easiest thing I know that would fix this is getting the live cd and repartitioning the hdd, but I feel like that would be excessive and unnecessary. any ideas what I should do?
ok, what I would do is, at the GRUB screen, hit “e” to edit the option you use to boot, and add the line “init 3”. This should boot you into runlevel 3, where X will not start. Then, you run (as superuser) SaX2 which will let you configure an acceptable display config, and when you select to save it, it’ll replace your current xorg.conf file with a new one that should work…
> The easiest thing I know that would fix this is getting the live cd and
> repartitioning the hdd, but I feel like that would be excessive and
> unnecessary. any ideas what I should do?
First, try to boot as usual. You should get the command line.
Once there, just login as root and type:
sax2 -r -m 0=vesa
That will try to setup your vga to use standard “vesa” driver. At least it
will let you login into a graphical session.
Okay, I’ve tried out both suggestions and these are the results:
When I try running SaX2, it gets to the spinning cursor and the following lines at which point the monitors go black.
your configuration will not be read in
no X-server is running
will start its own if needed
The command “sax2 -r -m 0=vesa” also results in those lines and blacks out. However, a small display appears, saying that it is not the optimum resolution (1680x1050)
OK, this is normal. What I don’t think is normal is this:
it stays black and you never get to a “test display screen” where you are queried whether you want to accept the configuration SaX2 is giving you (or whether you want to edit it) etc.? All this should be in graphics (not text) mode.
> 2) The command “sax2 -r -m 0=vesa” also results in those lines and
> blacks out. However, a small display appears, saying that it is not the
> optimum resolution (1680x1050)
Then you can try the same but with a lower vesa resolution:
sax2 -r -m 0=vesa --vesa 0:800x600@60
Another option could be using “radeon” driver:
sax2 -r -m 0=radeon
Anyway, you can review what’s is going on by running:
It never allows me to configure my screen. As soon as the monitors go out, I can’t do anything. I guess I could since it’s still running at that point, but I wouldn’t be able to see it…
As for Camaleón’s suggestion, Radeon led me to the black screens. And I tried out vesa in every lower res I could think of, but every time, it ended up in what looked like the GRUB screen extremely blown up, tiled and in a very scratchy/discolored manner that was also unresponsive.
I have to say that the “cat /var/log/SaX.log | less” was pretty interesting, though, but I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking for.
> It never allows me to configure my screen. As soon as the monitors go
> out, I can’t do anything. I guess I could since it’s still running at
> that point, but I wouldn’t be able to see it…
>
> As for Camaleón’s suggestion, Radeon led me to the black screens. And
> I tried out vesa in every lower res I could think of, but every time, it
> ended up in what looked like the GRUB screen extremely blown up, tiled
> and in a very scratchy/discolored manner that was also unresponsive.
That sounds very weird.
Maybe a setting in you xorg.conf is the culprit. You can try to rename (just
rename, never delete) your original /etc/X11/xorg.conf and then allow the
system to recreate it from scratch.
If you are in command line (init 3), to rename that file you can run:
mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.old
and then run “init 5” or try to start X “startx”.
> I have to say that the “cat /var/log/SaX.log | less” was pretty
> interesting, though, but I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking for.
That file registers the failures (if any). At the bottom it should be the
interesting part (errors and warnings)
yes! /etc/X11/xorg.conf is where X looks for its configuration info
(well, unless your X was manually edited and compiled to look for xorg.conf elsewhere (which is not the case if you’re installing off the usual sources, and I can’t imagine why anyone would want to change the location anyway), then you’re definitely missing a file)
> I can’t find anything under that directory. So I ended up searching for
> everything containing “xorg.conf” and all of my hits came back with
> either
>
> 1) /tmp/sax2-3***/xorg.conf
> or
> 2) /var/lib/sax/xorg.conf
>
> Is the fact that I’m missing /etc/X11/xorg.conf have anything to do
> with my problem?
I doubt xserver can start if that file is no present :-?.
I know current nvidia and ati proprietary drivers do not take into account
the settings of xorg.conf, but that file also controls input devices so I
think it must be there as SaX2 expects to find it.
Yeah I used root, and I know for sure that I didn’t manually move it elsewhere… Really strange that it should go missing like that then.
Also I tried typing in the command and here’s what I got (just a note, the first letter gets partially cut off from the left so I’ve guessed at the words/phrases)
Total 84
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 1353 Apr 12 2003 Xmodmap
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 1049 Jun 20 2001 Xmodmap.remote
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 5051 Jul 12 2007 Xresources
lrwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 10 2008 fs
lrwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 10 2008 lbxproxy
lrwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 10 2008 proxymngr
lrwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Dec 10 2008 rstart
lrwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 10 2008 x11perfcomp
lrwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 22 03:15 xdm
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 5512 Dec 3 2008 xim
lrwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 10 2008 xim.d
lrwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Dec 3 2008 xinit
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 36 Jun 16 16:30 xorg.conf.md5
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 11458 Jun 16 16:30 xorg.conf.old
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 5747 Jun 16 16:30 xorg.conf.saxsave
lrwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 10 2008 xsm
I’m wondering if there could be something else wrong with his system… I mean, something was able to back up his copy of xorg.conf to xorg.conf.old, but then failed to create a new xorg.conf? strange… and, SaX2 run as root ought to have been able to create a working xorg.conf file (even if nvidia-settings would be better at it). Or at least there ought to be an xorg.conf file…
