Dual monitors with optimus

[pnunn]

Hi Guys,

Another "daul monitor with optimus" issue here.

I had both monitors working on my dell fine with the 319 nvidia drivers with optimus turned off (stick with me, its a long story).. but I decided yesterday, possibly foolishly, to upgrade to the 331 drivers.

When I rebooted, the monitor was stuck at some stupidly low resolution, so I though I'd re-enable optimus and see what happened. Well, to my surprise, the clarity of the text on the screen went up enormously, the laptop runs MUCH cooler and all was good in the world, UNTIL I plugged it back into the docking station and there was no sign of life from by big monitor sittirg next to it (on a display port).

I tested bumbleebee starting an app with the nvidia card and that seemed to work (tested with firefox, but not 100% sure it was running on the nvidia but it didn't throw any errors) so the install seems to be OK.

xrandr shows:
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 32767 x 32767
LVDS1 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 194mm
640x480 59.9
VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VIRTUAL1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
1920x1080 (0x47) 152.5MHz
h: width 1920 start 2010 end 2070 total 2226 skew 0 clock 68.5KHz
v: height 1080 start 1086 end 1095 total 1142 clock 60.0Hz

if that's any help.

lspci shows the two cards OK
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF108GLM [NVS 5200M] (rev ff)

Any ideas please? I've had a bit of a poke around the forums and web, but nothing there makes much sense to me.
Seems a waste to have this honging great Dell monitor sitting on the desk not doing anything.

Thanks

Peter.

[SteveRiley]

Do you really need Bumblebee | Optimus | Prime | whatever? Using only the binary blob and only the nVidia chip on my T520, I can drive three monitors without any problems. Please note that if you have the Xorg-Edgers PPA enabled, you'll need to ensure that the default "recommends" for bumblebee doesn't pull the package back in. I do it this way:

steve@t520:~$ [B]cat /etc/apt/preferences.d/no-bumblebee-prime[/B]
Package: bumblebee
Pin: version 0.0
Pin-Priority: -1

Package: bumblebee:i386
Pin: version 0.0
Pin-Priority: -1

Package: nvidia-prime
Pin: version 0.0
Pin-Priority: -1

Package: nvidia-prime:i386
Pin: version 0.0
Pin-Priority: -1

[pnunn]

Thanks Steve I might end up with that solution again. I was just using the nvidia card (had optimus turned off in the bios) and the dual monitor setup was working fine.. BUT, i discovered that the machine runs SO much cooler without the nvida graphics on all the time, and the font rendering is amazingly clearer without the nvidia as well, so I'd happily just stay with the intel graphics if I could just get the other monitor working.

Peter.

[SteveRiley]

What kind of machine do you have, laptop or desktop?

Fonts on my nVidia-only laptop look wonderful. Here's my setup:

[pnunn]

It's a Dell E6530 which I thought was working really well too with just the NVIDIA stup, but, as soon as I switched to the other graphics card, things were even better than with the NVIDIA. I have to say I was surprised. And, its MUCH cooler to run this way.

Peter.

[SteveRiley]

Yes, Intel graphics will run cooler than the discrete nVidia chip. But depending on how the particular chips are wired, you may have less flexibility. For instance, using only Intel graphics on my T520, I can drive the internal LCD and only one external monitor and only through the VGA port. I need to drive multiple external monitors at work using HDMI ports in the dock, and I'm not of the opinion that Optimus support is stable enough for daily use, thus I've enabled nVidia only.

I have no explanation as to why fonts appear better on your machine with Intel graphics. It shouldn't make any difference, really.

FWIW, I have a hand-tuned /etc/X11/xorg.conf that tweaks a few settings, mostly for reducing power usage and fixing brightness control problems. Perhaps these will help cool down your machine, too. You will need to change BoardName to whatever's correct for your computer.

steve@t520:~$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "NVS 4200M"
    Option         "TripleBuffer" "1"
    Option         "OnDemandVBlankInterrupts" "1"
    Option         "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1"
    Option         "RegistryDwords" "PerfLevelSrc=0x2222; PowerMizerLevel=0x3; PowerMizerLevelAC=0x3; PowerMizerDefault=0x3; PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x3"
EndSection

[pnunn]

Thanks Steve,

Looks as though I've really toasted things here. I just turned off optimus in the bios in an attempt to got back to a working NVIDIA only setup, and guess what, no X at all now.

I tried nvidia-xconfig which generated a bland xorg.conf file for me, but when I do startx from there I get "no screens found". I also tried dpkg --reconfigure xserver-xorg without success.

I went looking at my pre-upgrade backups, but the is no xorg.conf file in the X11 directory (no idea how that is) so I can't even copy that from the backup to see if I can get it atleast started. Any ideas??

I tried the second monitor without the nvidia card (on the vga port) and nothing, so looks as though on this bloody dell, its nvidia only or a really expensive blank monitor on the desk. VERY dissapionting.


Ta

Peter.

[SteveRiley]

These days, you really don't need an xorg.conf file unless you want to set specific options, as I've done. Even with the nVidia binary driver ("blob"), autodetection takes care of everything. I'm surprised you're getting a "no screens found" error. Post a copy of /var/log/Xorg.0.log here, let's take a look.

Also, show the output of

egrep "nvidia|nouveau" /etc/modprobe.d/*

You might also consider completely purging all nVidia-related files. Then make sure you have the package xserver-xorg-video-nouveau installed -- this is the open-source Nouveau driver. At least see if you can get the system to start X using that. Then reinstall the nVidia blob.

And I'm off to bed now. Will check back in the morning.

[pnunn]

Thanks Steve, that put me on the right track. Turns out that bumblebee had all of the nvidia drivers blacklisted. So, removed bumblebee, and two things happened. The second monitor fired up on the vga connection (but at a crappy resolution) and I was able to re-enable the nvidia only setup and it all just worked. I'll have a go at your "modifications" and see what happens now.

Thanks mate.

Peter.

[SteveRiley]

Glad you got it sorted.