Is it possible to create a tile-display (or optiportal) with FreeBSD?

baronobeefdip · #1 July 13th, 2012, 22:28

I have been researching optiportals. (which is basically when you have a cluster of computers that control a separate screen, And these screens can be placed close to each other a create a single image). And there are several solutions to do this but some aren't very simple to set-up. For instance i have been trying my luck with ROCKS cluster's distribution. (The latest version of ROCKS that has the VIZ roll is maverick and is only supported in 64 bit architecture). With this in mind is it possible to make an optiportal with FreeBSD, perhaps with software like SAGE and Chromium. I have been trying my luck with SAGE and the source code is too confusing to grasp and theres little to no support for it especially when it comes to much older cards, And ATI models. As for chromium i read that in most cases this software needs to be installed from source too but this isn't always an easy task. I want to know if there are any other solutions for making an optiportal, Is there other software for FreeBSD besides SAGE, and Chromium?

Here's the website for SAGE.
http://sagecommons.org/

And there is no official website for Chromium other than the fact that it is inside of the Viz roll fo the ROCKS clusters distribution.

I might have some NVIDIA cards lying around but I am dead set on trying to use ATI cards.

roddierod · #2 July 16th, 2012, 12:54

I know nothing about this stuff, seems interesting, but a quick search says that this supports FreeBSD.

http://vrjuggler.org/features.php

baronobeefdip · #3 July 17th, 2012, 19:09

That's awesome, Now I just want to know if this project could easily work with ATI cards. Unlike Chromium which is included in the ROCKS Cluster Distribution, Everything when it comes to ATI cards needs to be setup and executed manually. Compared to the traditional (I think) NVIDIA cards that have everything set through a combination of setup commands.

baronobeefdip · #4 July 18th, 2012, 18:55

Hold on a sec, After reading the documentation provided on their website this is not what i was looking for. This project's sole purpose was to create virtual reality applications. There is nothing mentioned on the website about page mentioning terms like tile-display, optiportal or video wall. I would like to use a different project besides ROCKS display wall, Chromium or SAGE. The applications I have mentioned haven't had any luck with me since they require NVIDIA cards which I don't have. They do have compatibility for ATI Radeon cards but they are much harder to setup because everything has to be done manually. This is too much overhead and too much reading of vague documentation since there is little to no explanations and guides on how to setup Chromium with ATI cards and ROCKS Viz roll. Remember I don't have any NVIDIA cards on hand so this has to be done with ATI Radeon cards. Plus it has to be simple since I don't have the time to go through vague and non-helpful documentation to get everything running.

I appreciate the help though but unless virtual reality applications is the only thing that VRJuggler does, let me know and while your at it tell me how to setup the display tiles as simple as you can. I found nothing that mentions how to setup the software on the display nodes so this was a dead-end and not in any way helpful.

**wblock@** · #5 July 18th, 2012, 19:53

If you can get multiple Radeon cards to work at one time (I haven't tested this lately), why not just use xrandr(1) to set each output to cover 1/4 of the screen?

baronobeefdip · #6 July 18th, 2012, 20:39

It appears that this option only allows the tile display to show only 1/4 of the picture, I want to have more than 4 tile display nodes (Unless I missed something in that man page) I also saw nothing mentioned about getting each node to render an image based on what the server tells it to plus there is nothing that says how to configure each node's x,y placement and IP addresses. There seems to be no networking involved in this method therefore it doesn't resemble the programs like Chromium and SAGE.

This is an interesting find though. I have found something that has mentioned the use of Xorg and Xinerama but just like the others there is a vague if not a small amount of documentation. The documentation I found is vague and less than helpful.

**wblock@** · #7 July 18th, 2012, 20:58

The xorg mailing lists might be the best place to ask.

baronobeefdip · #8 July 24th, 2012, 22:41

I think I should try the VRJuggler option, Xinerama seems to just extend a desktop environment across several screens that are attached to nodes. I want the type of system SAGE and Chromium works like. I haven't looked too much into VRJuggler yet but I will soon.

baronobeefdip · #9 July 27th, 2012, 19:33

I am looking into some VRJuggler a little more now and there is very specific information on how to add and configure displays. The problem however is that there are no installation instructions that are clearer then then one that came with the archive. All it says is how to extract the file, It says nothing about building and installing the program. I also want to know all of the dependancies for the software because I did run the configure file in the extracted archive and it stops somewhere because there was an error.

Xinerama isn't what I was looking for since it's only a way to extend the desktop across multiple screens. I was looking for some clustered image rendering programs where you can control each screen attached to a node with a server node. You tell the screens what they should display by means of a display manager installed on the server node and a way for it to talk to the nodes and control them. This I guess requires ssh (To execute the program) and MPI (To send information to the nodes). The tricky part however is installing these programs and making them work since there is vague installation instructions. The configuration instructions are clear but all the installation guides assume you are using a linux distro like Ubuntu and Debian.

baronobeefdip · #10 July 28th, 2012, 00:42

I have been doing some more research and found a simple solution. It turns out the people over at the xorg development make an extension to their software that does what I want. It's called xdmx and it is able to in some way create tile displays. The one questions I have is how to setup the nodes. The server seems strait forward just install the operating system and xdmx. The add all the nodes to a config file it ha some where and run a command to start the xdmx sessions on the nodes and an xdmx console windows should appear but this is if you do it right. I want to know how to make to where you have a server that renders the images on the node's screens instead of a desktop that extends to other screens I want a visualization cluster.

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