GNOME dualhead screen "noise"

English Hardware
1

Hi!
I have trouble with dual head setup. I believe that video card support that, because win xp in dual boot works fine in dual head mode.
So i connect second monitor, boot, as soon as I log in appears massage “Oh no! Something has go wrong. A problem has occurred and system can’t recover, Please log out and try again”. Then I am logged in system and connect second monitor, type xrandr --auto or xrandr -q and noise appears on both monitors. I call that “noise” but i believe that is some memory issue or something, not actually video noise.
https://s17.postimg.org/sjc1739bv/IMG_20160901_092906.jpg](https://postimg.org/image/sjc1739bv/)

Phisycally this is one video board.
lspci -nnk

05:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV370 [Radeon X300] [1002:5b60]
    Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device [1043:0083]
    Kernel driver in use: radeon
    Kernel modules: radeon
05:00.1 Display controller [0380]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV370 [Radeon X300 SE] [1002:5b70]
    Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device [1043:0082]

xrandr -q

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1680 x 1050, maximum 4096 x 4096
VGA-0 connected primary 1680x1050+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 473mm x 296mm
   1680x1050      60.0*+   60.0* 
   1600x1200      60.0  
   1280x1024      75.0     60.0  
   1440x900       59.9  
   1280x960       60.0  
   1152x864       75.0  
   1024x768       75.1     70.1     60.0  
   832x624        74.6  
   800x600        72.2     75.0     60.3     56.2  
   640x480        75.0     72.8     66.7     60.0  
   720x400        70.1  
DVI-0 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
   1280x1024      60.0 +   75.0     60.0  
   1280x960       60.0  
   1152x864       75.0  
   1024x768       75.1     70.1     60.0  
   832x624        74.6  
   800x600        72.2     75.0     60.3     56.2  
   640x480        75.0     72.8     66.7     60.0  
   720x400        70.1  
S-video disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

xrandr --listproviders

Providers: number : 1
Provider 0: id: 0x54; cap: 0xf (Source Output, Sink Output, Source Offload, Sink Offload); crtcs: 2; outputs: 3; associated providers: 0; name: radeon
    output VGA-0
    output DVI-0
    output S-video

I tried manually configure /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d files and have no success.
50-monitor.conf

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier  "VGA-0"
    VendorName "ASUS"
    ModelName "VW225D"
    Modeline "1680x1050" 146.25 1680 1784 1960 2240 1050 1053 1059 1089 -hsync +vsync
    Option "PreferredMode" "1680x1050"
    Option "DPMS" "true"
    Option "Position" "0 0"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier  "DVI-0"
    VendorName "Samsung"
    ModelName "SyncMaster 730BF"
    Modeline "1280x1024" 108.00 1280 1328 1440 1688 1024 1025 1028 1066 +hsync +vsync
    Option "PreferredMode" "1280x1024"
    Option "DPMS" "true"
    Option "Position" "1680 0"
    Option "RightOf" "VGA-0"
EndSection

50-screen.conf


Section "Screen"
  Identifier "Screen0"
  Device "RadeonX300_1h"
  Monitor "VGA-0"
  SubSection "Display"
    Virtual 2960 1056
  EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
  Identifier "Screen1"
  Device "RadeonX300_2h"
  Monitor "DVI-0"
  SubSection "Display"
    Virtual 2960 1056
  EndSubSection
EndSection

50-device.conf

Section "Device"
  Identifier "RadeonX300_1h"
  Driver "radeon"
  Screen 0
  BusID "PCI:5:0:0"
  ## Required magic for radeon/radeonhd drivers; output name
  ## (here: "DVI-0") can be figured out via 'xrandr -q'
  Option "monitor-VGA-0" "VGA-0"
  Option "ZaphodHeads" "VGA-0"
  Option "EXAPixmaps" "off"
EndSection

Section "Device"
  Identifier "RadeonX300_2h"
  Driver "radeon"
  Screen 0
  BusID "PCI:5:0:1"
  ## Required magic for radeon/radeonhd drivers; output name
  ## (here: "DVI-0") can be figured out via 'xrandr -q'
  Option "monitor-DVI-0" "DVI-0"
  Option "ZaphodHeads" "DVI-0"
  Option "EXAPixmaps" "off"
EndSection

90-serverlayout.conf

Section "ServerLayout"
  Identifier "Main"
  Screen 0 "Screen0"
  Screen 1 "Screen1" RightOf "Screen0"
  Option "Xinerama" "on"
  Option "Clone" "off"
EndSection

Any thoughts or advice?

2

Appears its a dual gpu video card (??)

xrandr --listproviders

Providers: number : 1
Provider 0: id: 0x54; cap: 0xf (Source Output, Sink Output, Source Offload, Sink Offload); crtcs: 2; outputs: 3; associated providers: 0; name: radeon
    output VGA-0
    output DVI-0
    output S-video

Did you copy and paste that red text by mistake? I’ve never seen the listing of a device’s outputs, like such, in the xrandr listproviders command’s standard output

I tried manually configure /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d files and have no success.
Its unclear to me what you’re trying to accomplish.

  • zaphoheads is used to split multiple outputs (by default associated to a single X protocol Screen) to separate Screens … you appear to have tried to assign them both to Screen 0
  • you’re then unifying Screens with the Xinerama … That makes no sense – its like starting with a whole egg, cracking it (zaphoheads), and then trying to make the egg whole again (Xinerama)

Its also unclear to me what outputs each of the gpus on the adapter is driving. What happens right out of the box without any configurations? what does xrandr report then? You might also want to read my post here, as it provides a bit of background regarding the complexities of muliple gpus and unifying the Screens they’re driving into a contiguous desktop

3

Actually I don’t know why it occupies two addresses. This is it https://www.asus.com/Graphics-Cards/EAX300SEXTD_RoHS_Series/specifications/
Motherboard don’t have integrated video https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5L_1394/specifications/

There are no mistakes while copy and paste

cat /etc/os-release
NAME="openSUSE Leap"
VERSION="42.1"
VERSION_ID="42.1"
PRETTY_NAME="openSUSE Leap 42.1 (x86_64)"
ID=opensuse
ANSI_COLOR="0;32"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:opensuse:opensuse:42.1"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.opensuse.org"
HOME_URL="https://opensuse.org/"
ID_LIKE="suse"

xrandr --version
xrandr program version       1.4.1
Server reports RandR version 1.4

xrandr --listproviders
Providers: number : 1
Provider 0: id: 0x54; cap: 0xf (Source Output, Sink Output, Source Offload, Sink Offload); crtcs: 2; outputs: 3; associated providers: 0; name: radeon
    output VGA-0
    output DVI-0
    output S-video

Sorry about zaphoheads, I just playing around that and forgot to delete that string. I want contiguous desktop over this two monitors, connected to one video card. This video card have DVI, VGA and S-video. Asus VW225D have only VGA, and Samsung SyncMaster 730BF have VGA and DVI.

It is “noise” before login screen. Then Im logged - screen image wont recover when unplug second monitor.

Now it is configured like this, but second monitor (Samsung) just clone a part of first one. I can go to Settins->Display->ArrangeDesktops but it’s “noise” again.


Section "Device"
  Identifier "RadeonX300"
  Driver "radeon"
  Screen 0
  BusID "PCI:5:0:0"
  Option "MonitorLayout" "VGA, DVI"
  Option "monitor-VGA-0" "VGA-0"
  Option "monitor-DVI-0" "DVI-0"
  Option "MergedFB" "true"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
  Identifier "Screen0"
  Device "RadeonX300"
  Monitor "VGA-0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
  Identifier "Screen1"
  Device "RadeonX300"
  Monitor "DVI-0"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
  Identifier "Main"
  Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
  Screen 1 "Screen1" RightOf "Screen0"
EndSection
4

[quote="“petrozz,post:3,topic:120837”]

[QUOTE=Tyler_K,post:2,topic:120837"]

Appears its a dual gpu video card (??)[/QUOTE]
Actually I don’t know why it occupies two addresses. This is it https://www.asus.com/Graphics-Cards/EAX300SEXTD_RoHS_Series/specifications/
Motherboard don’t have integrated video
… This video card have DVI, VGA and S-video.[/QUOTE] Ahh, man, I should have clued in to the presence of the S-video on the board … in all likelihood, this second device is simply the TV-out controller. Your card is of an older vintage, and it wasn’t uncommon for cards to include a TV out for an analog TV connection like your board has … hadn’t thought of such for a while.

You should be able to see that with the output from:

cd /sys/class/drm && ls -la

Expect to see a topology of: card0, with the VGA and DVI ouptuts connected to it … not positive if the tv-out controller will be reported as card1 or not, but suspect that will be the case, and with the s-video output assigned to that

Thanks. Interesting that its there. Anyway, it’s highlighting of the s-video output helped to lead me back towards the correct train of thought (as opposed to a wild goose chase).

Okay, perfect. Should be straight forward and work “out of the box”, so to speak, without any need for user configuration … (but obviously it hasn’t turned out that way for you so far)

That won’t work for what you want (contiguous desktop) … and it looks like you were trying to derive ideas from some really old and “out of date/no longer applicaple” sources (example: MergedFB) … Regardless, the important point is that you shouldn’t need any particular xorg configurations, so, get rid of all of those that you have made.

Now, offhand, I don’t know exactly what the problem is that you’ve pointed out, but you should start the troubleshooting with a clean slate of your xorg environment, and let it “automagically” set things up.

Then, items of interest would be:

  • dmesg/boot log
  • xorg log

I’m not overly familiar with Gnome, so someone else will have to make suggestions if they can think of anything that might be troublesome there … however, the first thing that comes to mind for me is particular opengl needs for the Gnome environment

5

Yeah, it is pretty old one

Okay, perfect. Should be straight forward and work “out of the box”, so to speak, without any need for user configuration … (but obviously it hasn’t turned out that way for you so far)[/QUOTE]Yes, correct.

total 0
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root    0 Sep  8 10:30 .
drwxr-xr-x 46 root root    0 Sep  8 10:30 ..
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    0 Sep  8 10:30 card0 -> ../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:05:00.0/drm/card0
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root    0 Sep  8 10:30 card0-DVI-I-1 ->   ../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:05:00.0/drm/card0/card0-DVI-I-1
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root    0 Sep  8 10:30 card0-SVIDEO-1 ->   ../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:05:00.0/drm/card0/card0-SVIDEO-1
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root    0 Sep  8 10:30 card0-VGA-1 ->   ../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:05:00.0/drm/card0/card0-VGA-1
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    0 Sep  8 10:30 controlD64 -> ../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:05:00.0/drm/controlD64
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    0 Sep  8 10:30 renderD128 -> ../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:05:00.0/drm/renderD128
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    0 Sep  8 10:30 ttm -> ../../devices/virtual/drm/ttm
-r--r--r--  1 root root 4096 Sep  8 10:30 version

Okay, cleaned /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d from my .conf files and boot with two monitors connected. It, obviously, crashed. I have looked on dmesg, /var/log/boot.log, /var/log/Xorg.0.log and Xorg.1.log.
And I notice this:

gnome-shell[1346]: segfault at 8 ip 00007fe1c38db06a sp 00007ffc138cf2e0 error 4 in r300_dri.so[7fe1c33f0000+7c7000]
6

Ahh, my suspicions were wrong about that. In hindsight, that makes sense that it (the TV-out controller) wouldn’t be a drm device, and, also, that the radeon gpu has the s-video output (i.e. it renders the display stream) … The last video card I had that possessed TV-out capabilities was a nvidia card and, IIRC, it used a seperate Chrontel IC for that. I think all it (the Chrontel chip) did was colourspace conversion and DAC (digital-to-analog conversion) so that you could get the picture signal to an analog display device. In your case, the “05:00.1 Display controller [0380]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV370 [Radeon X300 SE] [1002:5b70]” may very well be embedded directly in the gpu package, as opposed to a discrete IC somewhere on the video card board.

Regardless, the class of device it is catagorized as (i.e. something other then drm) should able to be ascertained from the following two commands:

cd /sys/class && ls -la

ls /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:05:00.1

The first lists all the pci related device classes on your machine, while the latter’s list for that particular device provides enough info to match it to a class type. This is all academic, of course, and not related to your actual problem

[quote="“petrozz,post:5,topic:120837”]

Okay, cleaned /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d from my .conf files and boot with two monitors connected. It, obviously, crashed. I have looked on dmesg, /var/log/boot.log, /var/log/Xorg.0.log and Xorg.1.log.
And I notice this:

gnome-shell[1346]: segfault at 8 ip 00007fe1c38db06a sp 00007ffc138cf2e0 error 4 in r300_dri.so[7fe1c33f0000+7c7000]

[/QUOTE] r300_dri.so, of course, is the mesa opengl driver for your card

You should inquire on the mesa users list (see: Mailing Lists — The Mesa 3D Graphics Library latest documentation ) and/or maybe open up a bug report, or at least search through the mesa bugtracker or bugzilla to see if there are any other existing reports of r300 segfaulting like such.