Ikke's Blog

Old situation = laptop with 1280x768 display + Ati X1600 + fglrx + XGL + Beryl working fine.
New situation = old situation + 1280x1024 TFT connected to laptop VGA out
Desired situation = new situation + working Xinerama-like multihead setup (ie being able to move windows across both monitors, etc) including XGL/Beryl

What I got: after playing with fglrx settings, pairmode line etc, a normal Xorg server with TWM works, windows can be dragged across monitors,...

Whenever I restart GDM (and XGL) though, I can log in, then my standard Beryl-driven GNOME desktop is displayed on my laptop screen, and a second desktop (with its own panel etc) on the external screen. I'm unable though to move my mouse pointer to this screen, can not drag windows,... Basicly, the monitor and the desktop on it can't be used.

This is what I got in my XGL session:
$ fglrxinfo -display :1.0
Xlib: extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":1.0".
display: :1.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Mobility Radeon X1600
OpenGL version string: 1.2 (2.0.6334 (8.34.8))



display: :1.0 screen: 1
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Mobility Radeon X1600
OpenGL version string: 1.2 (2.0.6334 (8.34.8))

$ xrandr
SZ: Pixels Physical Refresh
*0 1280 x 768 ( 342mm x 203mm ) *60 75 70 72 56 47
Current rotation - normal
Current reflection - none
Rotations possible - normal
Reflections possible - none

$ xdpyinfo | grep dimensions
dimensions: 1280x768 pixels (342x203 millimeters)
dimensions: 1280x1024 pixels (342x271 millimeters)

$ less /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Graphics Adapter1"
Driver "fglrx"
VendorName "ATI Technologies Inc"
BoardName "ATI Radeon Mobility X1600"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "on"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "MonitorLayout" "LVDS, AUTO"
Option "Mode2" "1280x1024"
#Option "ForceMonitors" "LVDS, AUTO"
Option "DesktopSetup" "horizontal,reverse"
#Option "EnablePrivateBackZ" "yes"
Option "PairMode" "1280x768+1280x1024"
EndSection


It seems like the creation of Xwindows (when opening a menu, or a new application, etc) is very slow too :-( This might be just an impression though.

*update* Enabling Xinerama not by adding it in xorg.conf (doesn't work, enabling Xinerama disables DRI, so Xgl won't work), but by adding "+xinerama" to the Xgl start line in my custom gdm config file, seems to work... somewhat. I get my normal desktop on my laptop monitor, but only the standard grey-like X checkerboard on the external one. I can move my mouse pointer on it though, but get the default X cursor, not my normal one. I can't drag windows to it either, they seem not to get rendered. Maybe I got to recompile some packages to get Xinerama support...
Window creation isn't "slow" anymore too :-)
Strange though:
$ xdpyinfo | grep dimensions
dimensions: 1280x768 pixels (313x181 millimeters)

*update 2* Playing around some more with aticonfig doesn't solve the issue. It's pretty strange: whenever I'm in GDM, all looks fine. Once my GNOME session starts though, the system starts to clone the 1280x768 laptop monitor to the external monitor, which doesn't look very nice (wrong resolution), instead of providing me with a bigger screen, as when GDM is running. Pretty strange!
This is what xrandr says:
$ xrandr
SZ: Pixels Physical Refresh
0 2560 x 1024 ( 684mm x 271mm ) 60
1 1280 x 1024 ( 684mm x 271mm ) 75 70 60
*2 1280 x 768 ( 684mm x 271mm ) *60
3 1024 x 768 ( 684mm x 271mm ) 75 72 70 60 (omitted last lines) Choosing another mode doesn't solve the issue though :(

Ikke • Technology, Desktop 1 comment