Solved Dual head setup with two graphics cards

[Dan Turner]

Hi all,

I'm trying to setup dual-head display on my machine. I have two identical monitors (Iiyama ProLite B2280HS), but my machine has two graphics cards -- one on-board (intel) and one on PCI (NVidia). I have Xorg displaying on both monitors, but only my left monitor (the one attached to the daughter GPU card, not on-board) is the only one that's working correctly with LXDE.

The right monitor shows the cursor as the old-style large black X, and I can't drag windows to it. I can open a window by double clicking the Wastebasket icon on that monitor, but it opens with no window decorations. It looks like LXDE simply isn't running on that monitor.

The left-hand monitor works as intended. The mouse can transition to and from the right monitor, it just switches to the large black X cursor and no windows can be dragged with it.

Both monitors appear to be otherwise configured correctly (resolution, colour, relative position to one-another.)

My /usr/local/X11/xorg.conf.d/ directory is empty. Current /etc/X11/xorg.conf, /var/log/Xorg.0.log (named Xorg.0.txt,) and output from pciconf -lvhbce are attached.

The arandr GUI tool (a front-end to xrandr) does not show the right-hand monitor. The output of xrandr -q is:

Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192
DVI-I-0 disconnected primary (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VGA-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-I-1 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 477mm x 268mm
   1920x1080     60.00*+
   1680x1050     59.95
   1440x900      74.98    59.89
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02
   1280x960      60.00
   1152x864      75.00
   1024x768      75.03    70.07    60.00
   800x600       75.00    60.32    56.25
   640x480       75.00    72.81    59.94
HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

Finally, my system versions (from freebsd-version -uk; uname -a):

10.3-RELEASE-p7
10.3-RELEASE-p7
FreeBSD aew6pc07 10.3-RELEASE-p7 FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE-p7 #0: Thu Aug 11 18:38:15 UTC 2016     root@amd64-builder.daemonology.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  amd64

Many thanks for your help.

 

[SirDice]

one on-board (intel) and one on PCI (NVidia)

This is probably a bit tricky to do. Are you using the x11/nvidia-driver? The "problem" is that it replaces a couple of Xorg libraries. This will probably cause issues for the intel(4) driver.

 

[Dan Turner]

I believe I am:

% pkg info nvidia-driver-340-340.101_1                                                                                                 [2/1948]
nvidia-driver-340-340.101_1
Name           : nvidia-driver-340
Version        : 340.101_1
Installed on   : Wed May 31 13:52:34 2017 BST
Origin         : x11/nvidia-driver-340
Architecture   : FreeBSD:10:amd64
Prefix         : /usr/local
Categories     : x11 kld
Licenses       : NVIDIA
Maintainer     : danfe@FreeBSD.org
WWW            : http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html
Comment        : NVidia graphics card binary drivers for hardware OpenGL rendering
Options        :
        ACPI_PM        : off
        DOCS           : on
        LINUX          : on
        WBINVD         : off
Shared Libs required:
        libXext.so.6
        libX11.so.6
Shared Libs provided:
        libnvidia-eglcore.so.1
        libGL.so.1
        libvdpau_nvidia.so.1
        libnvidia-glsi.so.1
        libnvidia-cfg.so.1
        libGLESv1_CM.so.1
        libEGL.so.1
        libGLESv2.so.2
        libnvidia-glcore.so.1
        libnvidia-tls.so.1
Annotations    :
        repo_type      : binary
        repository     : FreeBSD
Flat size      : 211MiB
Description    :
These are the official NVidia binary drivers for hardware OpenGL rendering
in X11, using the GLX extensions.

WWW: http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

It is also loaded in kldstat.

% kldstat
Id Refs Address            Size     Name
[...ELIDED FOR BREVITY...]
29    1 0xffffffff81e1c000 e13260   nvidia.ko
[REMAINING ARE REMOVED]

Do you think that there's any work-arounds possible?

I've previously had a similar setup working with my old monitors. That setup had the left one as an older Iiyama on DVI input, and the right one was a smaller screen with VGA input. I think I might have had them both on my NVidia card in that instance, which would explain why the intel driver might not have come into play in that old setting. I'll see if I can dig out a VGA cable and put my right monitor on the NVidia card to see if the issue goes away and report back my findings.

Many thanks again.

 

[SirDice]

I think I might have had them both on my NVidia card in that instance, which would explain why the intel driver might not have come into play in that old setting.

That will be the best option, connect both monitors to the NVidia card. The driver supports multi-head really well.

Unrelated but you should update the OS too. FreeBSD 10.3 is currently at patch 21 and you're still at p7. There's no need to upgrade to 10.4 or 11.1 just yet. But you really should install the security updates. FreeBSD 10.3 will be supported until April 2018.

 

[Dan Turner]

Switching to the VGA output of the NVidia card worked. Thank you very much.

I've attached my now-working /etc/X11/xorg.conf for anyone else who finds this thread.