Nouveau - Nov 2014 - Nouveau and multi-monitor setup for Quadro NVS450 (G98)

Hi,

I have a NVidia Quadro NVS450 graphics card with on screen (4800 x 1200
pixels) over three monitors. I use the proprietary NVidia modules to
achieve accelerated 2D graphics and display effects.

Since about the beginning of 2014, probably related to changes in the
X11 or compositing manager, I experience screen lockups lasting from few
seconds to several minutes. I therefore would like to move to the
Nouveau driver which has become the default for most Linux distributions
anyway.

I am not able to create a multi-monitor setup with current Nouveau
drivers (from Ubuntu 14.04.1). xrandr -q only shows one monitor.
http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/MultiMonitorDesktop/ seems to refer
to Xinerama which is no alternative to me (slow, no display effects).

If I am not mistaken, the NVS450's chipset G98 is not supported
according to the feature matrix
http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix although certain other
sources from the web state otherwise. I did some extensive search on the
web to see if anybody had managed to create a three-monitor setup with
accelerated 2D graphics and display effects with no result.

Thus the question: is this possible, and if yes, what do I need to do?

Kind regards
Boris

On Sun, Nov 9, 2014 at 11:08 PM, Dr. Boris Neubert <omega at online.de>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a NVidia Quadro NVS450 graphics card with on screen (4800 x 1200
> pixels) over three monitors. I use the proprietary NVidia modules to
> achieve accelerated 2D graphics and display effects.
>
> Since about the beginning of 2014, probably related to changes in the
> X11 or compositing manager, I experience screen lockups lasting from few
> seconds to several minutes. I therefore would like to move to the
> Nouveau driver which has become the default for most Linux distributions
> anyway.
>
> I am not able to create a multi-monitor setup with current Nouveau
> drivers (from Ubuntu 14.04.1). xrandr -q only shows one monitor.
> http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/MultiMonitorDesktop/ seems to refer
> to Xinerama which is no alternative to me (slow, no display effects).
>
> If I am not mistaken, the NVS450's chipset G98 is not supported
> according to the feature matrix
> http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix although certain other
> sources from the web state otherwise. I did some extensive search on the
> web to see if anybody had managed to create a three-monitor setup with
> accelerated 2D graphics and display effects with no result.
>
> Thus the question: is this possible, and if yes, what do I need to do?
Hey Boris,
>From what I recall (I believe I have this board on my desk somewhere),
this board is actually two separate GPUs, each one driving two
outputs.  Your best bet is to treat it as one would an "Optimus"
configuration[1].

Ben.

[1] http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/Optimus/
>
> Kind regards
> Boris
>
> _______________________________________________
> Nouveau mailing list
> Nouveau at lists.freedesktop.org
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/nouveau

Am 10.11.2014 um 00:18 schrieb Ben Skeggs:
> On Sun, Nov 9, 2014 at 11:08 PM, Dr. Boris Neubert <omega at
online.de> wrote:
>> I have a NVidia Quadro NVS450 graphics card with on screen (4800 x 1200
>> pixels) over three monitors. I use the proprietary NVidia modules to
>> achieve accelerated 2D graphics and display effects.
>> I am not able to create a multi-monitor setup with current Nouveau
>> drivers (from Ubuntu 14.04.1). xrandr -q only shows one monitor.
>> http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/MultiMonitorDesktop/ seems to refer
>> to Xinerama which is no alternative to me (slow, no display effects).
>>
> From what I recall (I believe I have this board on my desk somewhere),
> this board is actually two separate GPUs, each one driving two
> outputs.  Your best bet is to treat it as one would an "Optimus"
> configuration[1].
>
Thank you Ben, for the hint.

Unfortunately I am trapped by another problem: after switching back from
NVidia driver to Nouveau driver in Ubuntu, I get GPU lockups already at
boot time, rendering the system inaccessible. This is a peculiarity of
the combination of my mainboard and NVidia graphics card. I already
filed that issue to the Ubuntu bug tracker. Booting with
nouveau.noaccel=1 works but KDE crashes silently during initialization.

I thus had no chance to try the Optimus thing at all. Deadlocked 

Cheers,
Boris

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