Fedora 9, multi-monitor, multi-card woes

[Jeff Hardy]

Jeff Hardy wrote:
> Phil Meyer wrote:
>> Jeffrey M. Hardy wrote:
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>> From FC1 to F8 inclusive, I have used the same hardware to have a 
>>> fully-spanned desktop using three cards across four monitors.  Rather 
>>> than being too ambitious at the moment, I am merely trying to get 
>>> three separate non-cloned desktops across three different cards.  
>>> Here is lspci output:
>>>
>>> 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV17GL [Quadro 
>>> NVS] (rev a3)
>>> 05:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 
>>> MX/MX 400] (rev b2)
>>> 05:01.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 
>>> MX/MX 400] (rev b2)
>>
>> We see that a lot here.  What is happening is that no single driver 
>> will handle both of those cards.  Your choices are:
>>
>> 1. (recommended) dump the $20.00 MX 400 for something made this 
>> century. :)
>>
>> 2. run both the legacy and the new nvidia drivers.  This is a REAL 
>> PITA and takes a level of expertise nearing black magic to make work.  
>> If you are not a wizard class admin, don't attempt it. :)
>>
>> When my users bring be machines with mismatched junk video cards to 
>> install, I tell them strait up that for the time it would take to make 
>> it work, I could make enough money to buy a new top of the line Nvidia 
>> or ATI card.
>>
>>
>> Think about it.
>>
>> Good Luck!
>>
> 
> The thing is, the same driver always did.  I've been running the 
> kmod-nvidia-96xx series of drivers from livna for years, which supports 
> both kinds of card.  Unfortunately it hasn't been updated upstream to 
> work with the newer kernel in F9.  In its stead, the nv driver should do 
> the trick for both types of card.  And why would mixing drivers matter?  
> Just a different Driver line in the config for each card.
> 


Not willing to wait to see if the 96xx driver is ever updated, I picked 
up some cards that work with the 173 driver.  As long as I use the 
nvidia driver, all is well.  I have nvidia's twinview up for my AGP 
dual-head card, and the other PCI cards work fine, for a total of four 
screens.  I have yet to get xinerama working across all of the screens, 
but that is not a huge priority.

Interestingly, I found that I have the same issue as I had with the 
older cards if I attempt to use the nv driver.  It seems nv simply 
cannot deal with any of the PCI cards I have tried.