CentOS - May 2013 - dual head on centos 5 and ancient Nvidia Quadro NVS280SD card

I was just handed a 2nd monitor for my system at work, and using Centos 5
(latest)
can't make dual head work. a good bit of googling isn't being
particularly
helpful either.

It's a HP workstation xw4100, with Nvidia Quadro NVS280SD graphics card.
Enabling dual head in the "display" app simply configures X so that it
(i.e., X) won't start. I haven't found the x log file in /var/log to be
helpful, either. This is using the legacy 96.x.x driver from Nvidia.

the NvidiaDetect app (from epel) says it should be using a newer driver
than the 96.x.x (forgot which one, exactly) but when attempting to install
it I get a msg that the card requires a 96.x.x driver.

browsing to nvidia.com and entering the model numbers into their driver
finder app gives another newer version that also gives the same result.
So it looks like I'm stuck with the 96.x.x driver.

some googling indicates a few people have made it work, but none of their
methods are working for me.

I was beginning to wonder if the hardware even supported dual head, so I
booted up a Fedora 17 LIVE CD. it initializes both monitors with no action
from me at all, with a desktop spanning the two screens, just fine. It must
be using the Nouveau driver (which, AFAIK, can't be used on Centos 5),
so still the issue could either be spanning/dual head doesn't work with the
ancient nvidia driver, or we (neither me, nor the tools on Centos) knows
how to configure it.

Clues would be appreciated. thanks in advance!


-- 
---- Fred Smith -- fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us
-----------------------------
                    The Lord detests the way of the wicked 
                  but he loves those who pursue righteousness.
----------------------------- Proverbs 15:9 (niv) -----------------------------

Fred Smith wrote:
> I was just handed a 2nd monitor for my system at work, and using Centos 5
> (latest) can't make dual head work. a good bit of googling isn't
being
> particularly helpful either.
>
> It's a HP workstation xw4100, with Nvidia Quadro NVS280SD graphics
card.
> Enabling dual head in the "display" app simply configures X so
that it
> (i.e., X) won't start. I haven't found the x log file in /var/log
to be
> helpful, either. This is using the legacy 96.x.x driver from Nvidia.
Nope, that won't work.
>
> the NvidiaDetect app (from epel) says it should be using a newer driver
> than the 96.x.x (forgot which one, exactly) but when attempting to install
> it I get a msg that the card requires a 96.x.x driver.
Ignore that - that's the driver it needs.
<nsip>
> Clues would be appreciated. thanks in advance!
Someone (Karanbir?) sent me a link to the CentOS FAQ that responded to
that, but I can't seem to find it, and the "FAQ CentOS General
Questions
returns a totally blank page (even in view page source). I found this on a
quick google:
<http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/Deployment_Guide-en-US/s1-xconfig-dualhead.html>

Your other options are kmod-nvidia, or the proprietary drivers - note that
in the latter case, every time you get an updated kernel, you need to
rebuild (which isn't a big deal). If you go this route, you'll find a
new
menu item, Nvidia control panel. Enable twinview, and you'll be good.

        mark

On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 4:47 PM, Fred Smith <fredex at
fcshome.stoneham.ma.us>wrote:
> I was just handed a 2nd monitor for my system at work, and using Centos 5
> (latest)
> can't make dual head work. a good bit of googling isn't being
particularly
> helpful either.
>
Dual head or dual monitor?

Dual head typically means running two instances of X, one on each video
out, which can only be done with two or more graphic cards from what I can
gather.


> It's a HP workstation xw4100, with Nvidia Quadro NVS280SD graphics
card.
> Enabling dual head in the "display" app simply configures X so
that it
> (i.e., X) won't start. I haven't found the x log file in /var/log
to be
> helpful, either. This is using the legacy 96.x.x driver from Nvidia.
>
> the NvidiaDetect app (from epel) says it should be using a newer driver
> than the 96.x.x (forgot which one, exactly) but when attempting to install
> it I get a msg that the card requires a 96.x.x driver.
>
> browsing to nvidia.com and entering the model numbers into their driver
> finder app gives another newer version that also gives the same result.
> So it looks like I'm stuck with the 96.x.x driver.
>
> some googling indicates a few people have made it work, but none of their
> methods are working for me.
>
> I was beginning to wonder if the hardware even supported dual head, so I
> booted up a Fedora 17 LIVE CD. it initializes both monitors with no action
> from me at all, with a desktop spanning the two screens, just fine. It must
> be using the Nouveau driver (which, AFAIK, can't be used on Centos 5),
> so still the issue could either be spanning/dual head doesn't work with
the
> ancient nvidia driver, or we (neither me, nor the tools on Centos) knows
> how to configure it.
>
> Clues would be appreciated. thanks in advance!
>
In my experience I was able to drive both the DisplayPort and DVI (or HDMI
and VGA) interfaces off my card to give me dual monitor support.

To setup the monitor preference I just created a monitors.conf file in
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d as such:

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier      "HDMI1"
        Option          "Primary"       "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier      "VGA1"
        Option          "RightOf"       "HDMI1"
EndSection

Substitute the Identifier for whatever 'xrandr' gives you, and use
LeftOf
if you secondary monitor is left of your primary.

-Ross