linuxconsole-dev

Avoiding redundant Int10 calls

[Yitzhak B. G. <yit...@ya...>]

Thanks for providing the excellent Howto, Daniel.
You may have solved a problem which has been plaguing
us: X occasionally crashes after multiple
logouts/restarts. I suspect the problem may be related
to the fact that the secondary cards are being
unecessarily restarted with Int10. Your
xorg.conf.probe solution seems to be what I need, but
I have several questions:
1.
You wrote: "A single layout will be enough, as long as
it includes all secondary cards.".
However, the documentation in the xorg.conf.probe file
says "Declare only one layout, and without the
"SingleCard" option."
Two questions arise:
1. Are you using only one secondary card, with
multiple ports? If so, which board is it? We are
seeking a reliable, inexpensive multiport board.
2. In our case, we have multiple secondary cards which
must be initialized. Shouldn't we be using the
"SingleCard" (or "BusID") option for each of the cards
to be initialized?
Following are the "Device" sections from my xorg.conf.
I appreciate your assistance. This has been an awful
problem, Yitzhak

Section "Device"
    Identifier "device0"
    VendorName "nVidia Corporation"
    BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce4 (generic)"
    Driver "nvidia"

    Screen 0
    BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
    Option "DPMS" "Off"
    Option "HWCursor" "on"
    Option "UseInt10Module" "on"
    Option "IgnoreDisplayDevices" "DFP, TV"
    Option "RenderAccel" "on"
    Option "ConnectedMonitor" "CRT"
    Option "IgnoreEDID" "off"
    Option "NvAgp" "1"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "device1"
    VendorName "NVidia"
    BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce4 (generic)"
    Driver "nvidia"

    Screen 0
    BusID "PCI:2:10:0"
    Option "DPMS" "Off"
    Option "HWCursor" "on"
    Option "UseInt10Module" "on"
    Option "IgnoreDisplayDevices" "DFP, TV"
    Option "ConnectedMonitor" "CRT"
    Option "RenderAccel" "on"
    Option "IgnoreEDID" "off"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "device2"
    VendorName "NVidia"
    BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce4 (generic)"
    Driver "nvidia"
#    Driver "nv"

    Screen 0
    BusID "PCI:2:08:0"
    Option "DPMS" "Off"
    Option "HWCursor" "on"
    Option "UseInt10Module" "on"
    Option "IgnoreDisplayDevices" "DFP, TV"
    Option "RenderAccel" "on"
    Option "ConnectedMonitor" "CRT"
    Option "IgnoreEDID" "off"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "device3"
    VendorName "NVidia"
    BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce4 (generic)"
    Driver "nvidia"
#    Driver "nv"

    Screen 0
    BusID "PCI:2:06:0"
    Option "DPMS" "On"
    Option "HWCursor" "on"
    Option "UseInt10Module" "on"
    Option "IgnoreDisplayDevices" "DFP, TV"
    Option "ConnectedMonitor" "CRT"
    Option "RenderAccel" "on"
    Option "IgnoreEDID" "off"
EndSection


> > Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 20:04:52 -0300
> From: Daniel Weingaertner <da...@in...>
> To: Linux Console
> <lin...@li...>
> Subject: Re: Documentation
> 
> James van Zeeland escreveu:
> > Certainly an evdev implementation document would
be helpful.

> We have one at
> http://www.c3sl.ufpr.br/multiterminal/howto-en.php
> 
> Greetings,
> Daniel

Re: Avoiding redundant Int10 calls

[Daniel W. <da...@in...>]

Yitzhak Bar Geva escreveu:
> (...) I suspect the problem may be related
> to the fact that the secondary cards are being
> unecessarily restarted with Int10
 > Unfortunately this does not seem to be the problem on nvidia cards. 
The disabling of Int10 is necessary for SiS and other chipsets, but does 
not seem to affect nvidia proprietary driver. Still, you might try. But 
I must warn you that we never got stability on NVidia cards. After some 
restarts or when running xscreensaver on all heads at once for some 
time, some devices freeze. We wrote a bugreport for NVidia, but had no 
answer until now. Perhaps you could do the same (using their 
nvidia-bug-report.sh), and so we could try to put some pressure.

> unecessarily restarted with Int10. Your
> xorg.conf.probe solution seems to be what I need, but
The .probe solution is because we only use int10 once, in Xinerama mode, 
before actually starting the different X

> 1. Are you using only one secondary card, with
> multiple ports? If so, which board is it? We are
> seeking a reliable, inexpensive multiport board.
 >
No. We are using multiple single cards. SiS315 chipset in most cases. I 
never tried the

> 2. In our case, we have multiple secondary cards which
> must be initialized. Shouldn't we be using the
> "SingleCard" (or "BusID") option for each of the cards
> to be initialized?
No. You could, but we use one Layout with the Xinerama mode. So we start 
only one X server that controls all four cards, arranging them as if 
they were one desktop with multiple screens. In this case, X initializes 
all cards.

> Following are the "Device" sections from my xorg.conf.
> I appreciate your assistance. This has been an awful
> problem, Yitzhak
> 
You should make your xorg.conf.probe with the layout described at our 
howto and use the same device section you sent me. Then, on the 
xorg.conf, you change the device section by putting
      Option "UseInt10Module" "off"
since the cards were already initialized.

And please let me know of your tests. We also want NVidia cards to work 
properly.

Greetings,
Daniel

> Section "Device"
>     Identifier "device0"
>     VendorName "nVidia Corporation"
>     BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce4 (generic)"
>     Driver "nvidia"
> 
>     Screen 0
>     BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
>     Option "DPMS" "Off"
>     Option "HWCursor" "on"
>     Option "UseInt10Module" "on"
>     Option "IgnoreDisplayDevices" "DFP, TV"
>     Option "RenderAccel" "on"
>     Option "ConnectedMonitor" "CRT"
>     Option "IgnoreEDID" "off"
>     Option "NvAgp" "1"
> EndSection
> 
> Section "Device"
> Identifier "device1"
>     VendorName "NVidia"
>     BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce4 (generic)"
>     Driver "nvidia"
> 
>     Screen 0
>     BusID "PCI:2:10:0"
>     Option "DPMS" "Off"
>     Option "HWCursor" "on"
>     Option "UseInt10Module" "on"
>     Option "IgnoreDisplayDevices" "DFP, TV"
>     Option "ConnectedMonitor" "CRT"
>     Option "RenderAccel" "on"
>     Option "IgnoreEDID" "off"
> EndSection
> 
> Section "Device"
>     Identifier "device2"
>     VendorName "NVidia"
>     BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce4 (generic)"
>     Driver "nvidia"
> #    Driver "nv"
> 
>     Screen 0
>     BusID "PCI:2:08:0"
>     Option "DPMS" "Off"
>     Option "HWCursor" "on"
>     Option "UseInt10Module" "on"
>     Option "IgnoreDisplayDevices" "DFP, TV"
>     Option "RenderAccel" "on"
>     Option "ConnectedMonitor" "CRT"
>     Option "IgnoreEDID" "off"
> EndSection
> 
> Section "Device"
>     Identifier "device3"
>     VendorName "NVidia"
>     BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce4 (generic)"
>     Driver "nvidia"
> #    Driver "nv"
> 
>     Screen 0
>     BusID "PCI:2:06:0"
>     Option "DPMS" "On"
>     Option "HWCursor" "on"
>     Option "UseInt10Module" "on"
>     Option "IgnoreDisplayDevices" "DFP, TV"
>     Option "ConnectedMonitor" "CRT"
>     Option "RenderAccel" "on"
>     Option "IgnoreEDID" "off"
> EndSection
> 
> 
> 
>>>Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 20:04:52 -0300
>>
>>From: Daniel Weingaertner <da...@in...>
>>To: Linux Console
>><lin...@li...>
>>Subject: Re: Documentation
>>
>>James van Zeeland escreveu:
>>
>>>Certainly an evdev implementation document would
> 
> be helpful.
> 
> 
>>We have one at
>>http://www.c3sl.ufpr.br/multiterminal/howto-en.php
>>
>>Greetings,
>>Daniel