Nvidia Binary Blob xrandr and multiple monitors

cctsurf · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 12 Oct 2006 Posts: 123

I've been running multiple monitors (6) on multiple cards (2) for quite some time now under nvidia's binary blob using xinerama. It seems that support for this configuration is going away, and that xrandr is preferred.
My understanding is that in recent versions of the nvidia driver, xrandr is supported. I have seen many people taking advantage of this for optimus support, but I can't find much help on using it to run my multi-head multi-card system.
I have not been able to get the monitors from my second card detected or listed when I have attempted to configure using xrandr. It seems that I can't use the nvidia server settings to produce a usable configuration.
I'd appreciate any help.
Thanks,
James

krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

I don't know where you get that info, never read anything about dropping support for multi monitor.
It's been really long time that nvidia no more use xinerama extention, but use its own internal xinerama, is that what you are speaking of?

i'm using 364.15, and still my two monitors are handle fine.
Are the two cards the same models? It could be that your nvidia drivers still handle one card, but has no more support for the other.

cctsurf · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 12 Oct 2006 Posts: 123

I'm not saying that nvidia is getting rid of support for xinerama, while they apparently have been doing this for a while, my system still works fairly well with it. What I am talking about is that it seems that randr or xrandr are becoming preferred methods of operating multiple monitor systems rather than xinerama within the xorg world. I have used twinview and Mosaic to run the screens just fine, but randr under the nvidia binary blob doesn't seem able to operate 2 separate cards, I can only see the screens attached to the first card under randr.
I had identical cards up until recently when one of those cards failed for me. Since then, I have been running cards from different generations (a 430 and a 610). At this point, they are working fine for me, but in order to move to kde plasma 5, randr seems to be the only option.
Thanks