Multiple X screens, multiple WM, TV-out

ab_at_telin.ugent.be
Date: 07/15/03 

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 12:41:41 +0000 (UTC)

Hi everybody,

 I'm trying to get the TV-out of my nvidia graphics card to work.
After messing around with TwinView without much success, I switched over
to a multiple screens approach, with more success. But I'd like to find
out whether I can run different window managers on the two screens
attached to my nvidia. That and some other stuff.

 First the setup: I've got an MSI Geforce4 Ti4200 card with TV-out,
connected to a NEC flatscreen and a TV. I run Debian with the 2.4.20
kernel and the latest nvidia driver (4363). The XF86Config-4 file looks as
follows (well, the relevant bits, that is):

# Graphics Card
# =============
Section "Device"
Identifier "Nvidia LCD"
Driver "nvidia"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Screen 0
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Nvidia TV"
Driver "nvidia"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Screen 1
EndSection

# Monitors
# ========
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "LCD"
HorizSync 28-50
VertRefresh 43-75
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "MyTV"
HorizSync 30-50
VertRefresh 60
EndSection

# Screens
# =======
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen LCD"
Device "Nvidia LCD"
Monitor "LCD"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen TV"
Device "Nvidia TV"
Monitor "MyTV"
Option "TVStandard" "PAL-B"
Option "TVOutFormat" "COMPOSITE"
DefaultDepth 24
Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "800x600"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubSection
EndSection

# Server Layout
# =============
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "TwoScreens Layout"
Screen 0 "Screen LCD"
Screen 1 "Screen TV" RightOf "Screen LCD"
InputDevice "Logitech Keyboard"
InputDevice "Logitech Mouse"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

 This works, but with a few quirks. First of all, when I run kde3.1 on it,
my LCD displays a configured kde, and the tv shows a default, and
unconfigurable kde (e.g. the 'configure panel' window doesn't actually
change anything). When I try other WM's such as icewm and ratpoison, the
TV image remains a bare X screen while the LCD is fine, although things
like mplayer file.avi -display :0/1 do work like a charm on the TV screen.

 Now I found some references to running two window managers on the same
card, one for each screen, which might solve that problem, but how do I
actually do this? Adapting the .xinitrc file, I suppose, but what do I
put in it?

 Secondly, before I log into X, the TV display is black, but after I've
logged out of an X session, the TV keeps flickering, sometimes in B&W,
sometimes in color. This means something is still sending signals (even if
garbage) to the TV. How can I avoid this?

 And last but not least: occasionally when I log out of X, the keyboard
locks up. Maybe the entire system hangs, I don't know, I haven't got
another machine haning on it to try a remote login. This is very annoying,
since it means having to reset the machine. Does anyone know what is
causing this, and more importantly, how I can avoid it? 

--
Alex

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