fglrx and Two Monitors

[stuffman]

I installed the fglrx drivers for my ATI Radeon 9600XT so I can get my dual monitor setup working, but when I applied the settings, I got 1024x768 resolution on both screens (which I wanted), but my xserver is giving me a 3584x1344 area so both monitors "pan" when I move the mouse around. I'm probably missing something very simple, but:

1) How on earth did this happen by default?

2) How do I tell my xserver to use a 2048x768 desktop so I don't pan around?

[Rog131]

Re: fglrx and Two Monitors

This is bit old (Dapper):
Topic: minor video issues
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=9486.0

I did have Big Desktop, two crt - monitors (1024x768). In the xorg.conf, Section "Screen":

Section "Screen"
  Identifier "Default Screen"
  Device   "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon 9600 XT (RV350 AR)"
  Monitor  "Generic Monitor"
  DefaultDepth   24
  SubSection "Display"
   Depth   24
   Modes  "2048x768" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
  EndSubSection
EndSection

[HighHo]

Re: fglrx and Two Monitors

This command should do it all for you: aticonfig --dtop=horizontal --overlay-on=1 --resolution=0,2048x768,1024x768

[adelie]

Re: fglrx and Two Monitors

This was quite the sore topic for me, which has turned me off of ATI once and for all.

But . . .

What I did, was to download the driver from ATI. Then build a package for gutsy (I renamed the download because it was too long to type and I am lazy):

sudo ./ati-driver-8.42.3.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/gutsy

Then you can install the .deb packages:

dpkg -i xorg-driver-fglrx_8.42.3-1_i386.deb fglrx*.deb

You're not done yet. The above will install the xorg driver, but not the kernel module. It seems that I had to do that myself. This is contained in the fglrx-kernel-source package that you installed above.

cd into /usr/src, and run

sudo tar xvfj fglrx.tar.bz2

This will create a modules directory. cd into modules/fglrx and run the make.sh. this will build the fglrx kernel module.

cd /usr/src/modules
sudo ./make.sh

If all is built well, you should have a module called fglrx.ko. Copy this into /lib/modules/<your kernel version>/volatile/.

sudo cp fglrx.ko /usr/src/2.6.22-14-generic/volatile/

Run depmod to make the kernel happy, then you can load it and restart kdm.

depmod -a
modprobe fglrx
/etc/init.d/kdm restart

You can run amdcccle to set the dual screen and the resolution should be whatever the monitors are capable of.

Hope that helps.

-Dave

[SheeEttin]

Re: fglrx and Two Monitors

Stop!

Things have changed in Gutsy!

No longer do you have to faff around with xorg.conf to get a dual-head display working! (In fact, doing things the old way - using MergedFB - no longer works and will prevent X from starting.)

Avoid the GUI "Monitor and Display" thing like the plague. I have never, ever known it to do anything but break otherwise working setups.

Instead, use the "xrandr" command in a terminal...

For me, "xrandr --output VGA-0 --auto" turns on the external screen as a clone of the main screen and ""xrandr --output VGA-0 --right-of LVDS" puts it (you guessed) to the right of the main screen.

You might get problems with maximum allowed display size... if so post back here, but try that for now.

[stuffman]

Re: fglrx and Two Monitors

Thanks guys, but no luck so far:

dylan@dylan-desktop:~$ aticonfig --dtop=horizontal --overlay-on=1 --resolution=0,2048x768,1024x768
Warning: Failed to set hardware overlay to head 1 immediately.
error at set screen resolution : screen0 does not exist
Segmentation fault

Changing the xorg.conf was no help.

dylan@dylan-desktop:~$ sudo ./ati-driver-installer-8.42.3-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/gutsy
Created directory fglrx-install.ghEffD
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing ATI Proprietary Linux Driver-8.42.3...
==================================================
 ATI Technologies Linux Driver Installer/Packager
==================================================
Generating package: Ubuntu/gutsy
./packages/Ubuntu/ati-packager.sh: line 58: dpkg-architecture: command not found
Error: unsupported architecture:
Removing temporary directory: fglrx-install.ghEffD

...and finally...

dylan@dylan-desktop:~$ xrandr
Xlib: extension "RANDR" missing on display ":0.0".

Any other suggestions? This is a real pain in the butt! Darn ATI!

[HighHo]

Re: fglrx and Two Monitors

try: sudo aticonfig --dtop=horizontal --overlay-on=1 --resolution=0,2048x768,1024x768 --force

That will should generate a new file with the settings required.

[adelie]

Re: fglrx and Two Monitors

Generating package: Ubuntu/gutsy
./packages/Ubuntu/ati-packager.sh: line 58: dpkg-architecture: command not found
Error: unsupported architecture:

Sorry. Sometime I assume that people have the necessary packages installed. To fix this run:

sudo apt-get install dpkg-dev

[stuffman]

Re: fglrx and Two Monitors

Wow, I should have looked closer at that error message... sometimes doing things at 4:30am isn't prudent. I just figured it was a Kubuntu thing since it worked fine when I tried installing them in Ubuntu (which I gave up on for the same issues, plus, I like KDE much better). Let me try this again!

[stuffman]

Re: fglrx and Two Monitors

Alright, after installing a few missing packages, I got the driver built fine, but I'm having problems with the kernel module:

dylan@stuff-kubuntu:/usr/src/modules/fglrx$ sudo ./make.sh
ATI module generator V 2.0
==========================
initializing...
kernel includes at /usr/src/linux/include not found or incomplete
file: /usr/src/linux/include/linux/version.h
dylan@stuff-kubuntu:/usr/src/modules/fglrx$ sudo ./make.sh
ATI module generator V 2.0
==========================
initializing...
kernel includes at /usr/src/linux/include not found or incomplete
file: /usr/src/linux/include/linux/version.h

I assume it's looking in the wrong place for the kernel source.

Thanks again for all the help.

[stuffman]

Re: fglrx and Two Monitors

I tried downloading a few kernel packages and got a linux-source-2.6.15.tar.bz2 which I extracted, then tried editing the make.sh to use the corresponding directory (/usr/src/linux-source-2.6.15), but it doesn't work (there's no version.h in the /include/linux subdirectory). I'm guessing this isn't the sources I want?

[SheeEttin]

Re: fglrx and Two Monitors

Are you running the 2.6.15 kernel? That one's kind of old... Try "uname -r"; this'll tell you the exact version of your running kernel. You only need the "2.6.xx" part.

Doing a search in the repos for "linux-source-" returns only linux-source-2.6.22 and xen-source-2.6.16...

[stuffman]

Re: fglrx and Two Monitors

I'm using x86_64, if that has anything to do with the outdated kernel.

Any other suggestions?

[mchuskie]

Re: fglrx and Two Monitors

dylan@dylan-desktop:~$ xrandr
Xlib: extension "RANDR" missing on display ":0.0".

Any other suggestions? This is a real pain in the butt! Darn ATI!

Was this with a dual-screen xorg.conf? Go back down to a vanilla config file (or delete/move it entirely). Plus I don't know if fglrx supports - well, anything - so you might get more mileage with either ati or radeon.

[SheeEttin]

Re: fglrx and Two Monitors

I had my computer running (briefly) hooked up to both my TV and my monitor, just to see if I could get it running. It took a few tries, but it did work. (This was with fglrx 8.40.4, I think.)