Having been with Linux since the early 90's and having been away from linux for the past few years and now coming back to it, I have come to realize my knowledge is way out of date, and the old way of doing things is no longer the right way. Back in the day, I would setup a multi-monitor config in xorg.conf. But, I have come to understand that this is no longer the right way. Lets start with the basics.
- System is AMD R5 2600x on MSI X470 Gaming Plus with 16GB (8dbx2, dual channel) Kingston HyperX 3200.
- I use one Samsung NVME M2 Evo 970, two Evo 860 SATA SSDs, and one Toshiba spinner.
- I use a dual GPU/dual monitor set up due to single HDMI outputs on my GTX970 and GTX 750ti. Neither display has DVI, nor do I want to use them as it breaks DRM. I have a philips monitor on hdmi-0-0 (GTX970 set as primary) and a LG monitor on hdmi-1-0 (gtx750ti set as secondary).
- Using Nvidia Proprietary driver 470.
- installed coolbits via adding 20-nvidia.conf to /usr/share/x11/xorg.conf.d/ with the setting coolbits blah blah blah option "coolbits" 28 blah blah blah.
For the most part, its 99.9% functional.
The problem:
1. In KDE settings for display and monitors it shows the setup correctly. It displays correctly. You would not know there was a problem until you try to do color calibration on the secondary, and it does not work. Will only adjust primary. So, I went to Nvidia-Settings.
2. Nvidia-Settings shows 3 monitors when there are only two, with the two named ones correctly listed along with a third not named. It considers the third noname "Prime" and identifies it as using hdmi-1-0, which is in fact the secondary according to KDE (and reality). It considers the LG monitor disabled. Games and apps see things correctly. The Nvidia-Settings does not.
3. Nvidia-settings used to persist across sessions, but after cloning the drive (a small old 120gb Kingston SSD to a Samsung evo970 nvme) now it does not.
4. Will no longer recover from sleep. System comes on but screens remain off.
Oddities of migration:
When I used clonezilla to clone the 120gb sdd to the 500gb NVME all went well, except upon reboot grub changed and it changed my bios settings and I no longer see MBR drives. It borked on trying to resize the LVM2 partition to use the entire 500gb nvme. Using KDE Partition Manager after cloning claimed success, but the system refused to expand the filesystem to the grown partition. KDE Partition Manager shows the whole drive as in use and file system expanded, but command line tools like "df" and "resize2fs" say it aint so (claiming "nothing to do"). So much like the graphics driver there is a conflict between what the hardware reports as happening, and what KDE reports as happening.
When migrating I reformatted the 2 Samsung evo 860 SSDS to linux, and mounted them as "games" and media" within folders in my home directory. Due to the refusal of the system to expand the FS to the full partition size, I simply restored the partition size back to what it was and re-partitioned the empty space and mounted it as as "/home/shad (my user name)" and restored all the files from the exiting home. I did not delete the original files from the existing /home/shad on the 120gb partition, simply mounted over it.
I wondering if Coolbits might have broked the system, I removed 20-nvidia.conf from xorg.conf.d, and deleted the nvidia-setting.rc from home. Upon reboot, coolbits persists and it is still showing up in the newly regenerated nvidia-settings.rc.
So... obviously the system has cached the information I added with 20-nvidia.conf and is now set it as permanent even if it is removed from /usr/share/x11/xorg.conf.d/.
So the question is, where is this cache? Where does Xorg get its configuration data for cards and displays? I have searched everywhere and I can find nothing relating to it. No screen setting anywhere. not in etc, not in usr, not in home.
- System is AMD R5 2600x on MSI X470 Gaming Plus with 16GB (8dbx2, dual channel) Kingston HyperX 3200.
- I use one Samsung NVME M2 Evo 970, two Evo 860 SATA SSDs, and one Toshiba spinner.
- I use a dual GPU/dual monitor set up due to single HDMI outputs on my GTX970 and GTX 750ti. Neither display has DVI, nor do I want to use them as it breaks DRM. I have a philips monitor on hdmi-0-0 (GTX970 set as primary) and a LG monitor on hdmi-1-0 (gtx750ti set as secondary).
- Using Nvidia Proprietary driver 470.
- installed coolbits via adding 20-nvidia.conf to /usr/share/x11/xorg.conf.d/ with the setting coolbits blah blah blah option "coolbits" 28 blah blah blah.
For the most part, its 99.9% functional.
The problem:
1. In KDE settings for display and monitors it shows the setup correctly. It displays correctly. You would not know there was a problem until you try to do color calibration on the secondary, and it does not work. Will only adjust primary. So, I went to Nvidia-Settings.
2. Nvidia-Settings shows 3 monitors when there are only two, with the two named ones correctly listed along with a third not named. It considers the third noname "Prime" and identifies it as using hdmi-1-0, which is in fact the secondary according to KDE (and reality). It considers the LG monitor disabled. Games and apps see things correctly. The Nvidia-Settings does not.
3. Nvidia-settings used to persist across sessions, but after cloning the drive (a small old 120gb Kingston SSD to a Samsung evo970 nvme) now it does not.
4. Will no longer recover from sleep. System comes on but screens remain off.
Oddities of migration:
When I used clonezilla to clone the 120gb sdd to the 500gb NVME all went well, except upon reboot grub changed and it changed my bios settings and I no longer see MBR drives. It borked on trying to resize the LVM2 partition to use the entire 500gb nvme. Using KDE Partition Manager after cloning claimed success, but the system refused to expand the filesystem to the grown partition. KDE Partition Manager shows the whole drive as in use and file system expanded, but command line tools like "df" and "resize2fs" say it aint so (claiming "nothing to do"). So much like the graphics driver there is a conflict between what the hardware reports as happening, and what KDE reports as happening.
When migrating I reformatted the 2 Samsung evo 860 SSDS to linux, and mounted them as "games" and media" within folders in my home directory. Due to the refusal of the system to expand the FS to the full partition size, I simply restored the partition size back to what it was and re-partitioned the empty space and mounted it as as "/home/shad (my user name)" and restored all the files from the exiting home. I did not delete the original files from the existing /home/shad on the 120gb partition, simply mounted over it.
I wondering if Coolbits might have broked the system, I removed 20-nvidia.conf from xorg.conf.d, and deleted the nvidia-setting.rc from home. Upon reboot, coolbits persists and it is still showing up in the newly regenerated nvidia-settings.rc.
So... obviously the system has cached the information I added with 20-nvidia.conf and is now set it as permanent even if it is removed from /usr/share/x11/xorg.conf.d/.
So the question is, where is this cache? Where does Xorg get its configuration data for cards and displays? I have searched everywhere and I can find nothing relating to it. No screen setting anywhere. not in etc, not in usr, not in home.
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