CentOS - May 2006 - Anybody ever done 6 monitors on one server before? :)

My boss wants to put together a Network Operations Center, with a 
network monitoring server as the centerpiece.  He wants that server to 
have 6 monitors: 4 for network monitoring tools (rrdtool, etc) and two 
for running commands and the like (ping, traceroute, etc).

I know that with the right video card(s) you can have two monitors, but 
has anybody had 6?

Thanks!

Ben

On Thursday 04 May 2006 16:59, Benjamin J. Weiss wrote:
> My boss wants to put together a Network Operations Center, with a
> network monitoring server as the centerpiece.  He wants that server to
> have 6 monitors: 4 for network monitoring tools (rrdtool, etc) and two
> for running commands and the like (ping, traceroute, etc).
>
> I know that with the right video card(s) you can have two monitors, but
> has anybody had 6?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Ben
Get an SLI maonboard board and two nvidia graphics cards. That's 4 monitors 
right there. Then grab yourself a PCI board for the other two outputs... 
That's what I did here - works great with the closed source nvidia drivers. 
We tried with the open source Nvidia drivers and ATI cards - all fell short 
in one way or another. 

Peter.

My boss wants to put together a Network Operations Center, with a 
network monitoring server as the centerpiece.  He wants that server to 
have 6 monitors: 4 for network monitoring tools (rrdtool, etc) and two 
for running commands and the like (ping, traceroute, etc).

I know that with the right video card(s) you can have two monitors, but 
has anybody had 6?

Thanks!

Ben
------------------------------

Closest thing I have seen is Quake 3 on a 24 monitor system... But it uses a
cluster of 12 linux servers with 2 monitors per server...  Not sure if it
can be done without a cluster type environment.  Here is the link on the
Quake 3 gaming setup... Looks pretty slick! :)

http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/03/linux_based_24_monitor_quake_3.
html



James Gagnon

On Thu, 2006-05-04 at 15:59, Benjamin J. Weiss wrote:
> My boss wants to put together a Network Operations Center, with a 
> network monitoring server as the centerpiece.  He wants that server to 
> have 6 monitors: 4 for network monitoring tools (rrdtool, etc) and two 
> for running commands and the like (ping, traceroute, etc).
> 
> I know that with the right video card(s) you can have two monitors, but 
> has anybody had 6?
If you can hide the other PCs you can use one monitor each but
pretend they are all one with http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/
to make them share the same keyboard and mouse.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com

On 04/05/06, Benjamin J. Weiss <benjamin at birdvet.org>
wrote:
> I know that with the right video card(s) you can have two monitors, but
> has anybody had 6?
In addition to the other suggestions, there are quite a few articles
around on how to build a multi-headed multi-user system. For example:

http://www.rootprompt.org/article.php3?article=9766

Will.

On Thu, 04 May 2006 15:59:45 -0500
"Benjamin J. Weiss" <benjamin at birdvet.org> wrote:
> I know that with the right video card(s) you can have two monitors,
> but has anybody had 6?
I did 5 with matrox cards (1x g450 + 4x millenium). Did both X and fb -
it's kinda interesting to see 5 different divx playing off the same
machine :)

Matrox cards are designed exatcly for the kind of thing you're looking
for. Just one word of warning - get older models, like g400/450/550
(they're dirt cheap from ebay), not the newer ones (parhelia & co),
since the drivers for the newer ones are nonexistant or next to useless.

It would be a nice experiment to get four or five 4-head pci models and
stuff them into one box ... :)~

-- 

Jure Pe?ar
http://jure.pecar.org