More X-config nightmares without Sax2 - 3 Monitors on nvidia Quadro card

English Hardware
1

Hi,

I have a Nvidia Quadro NVS 420 video card that has 4 monitor outputs. Its basically 2 video cards in one. 2 monitors on 1 card, 1 monitor on the other.

What I would like to achieve is to be able to drag across all 3 screens and have compositing support.

I’ve installed the nvidia drivers as the default opensource ones can see the second screen on the first card. I’ve also read a number of places that its possible to configure twinview to behave like xinerama and get the compositing support.

After a hours of experimental config file editing and commandline options using nvidia-config I’ve managed to get all 3 screens working with xinerama, but no compositing.

If I use twinview, it turns the first 2 screens into one giant screen (which is quiet awful to work with) and the last into a seperate screen.

Can anyone give me some advice as to how to get all 3 screens tiled using xrandr our something like that?

There is a patch on the nvidia forums from 2007 that addresss the problem, but obviously that was 3 years ago and for now obsolete code.

I’m desperate to get this working.

Thanks in advance

2

here’s the thread that contains the patch that addresses my problem:

[PATCH] “faked” Xinerama information for a triple-head TwinView setup - nV News Forums](http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=85604)

3

Can anyone give me some advice as to how to get all 3 screens tiled using xrandr our something like that?

I wish it was as simple as that! Gnome has better support for dual screen operation than KDE4 currently. Triple screen operation, in the configuration that you’d like (panoramic layout via one X-server) may not be possible.

Anyway, have a read of this thread.

Hopefully, DisplayPort technology will get around X-server limitations by moving the responsibility for screen splitting to the graphics card hardware.

I also found this page which may be helpful to you.

4

Hi
A bit late in the thread…

@rivalizm, have you tried using nvidia-settings, does it recognize the
attached monitors in the X Server Display Configuration?

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
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