I'd like to move from windows with my current workstation. The only thing holding me back is that I have 3 monitors connected to the system and I really take advantage of the real estate when working.
I just installed Ubuntu 10.10 on the system and one of the monitors is up and running just fine. This monitor is connected to the built-in Intel adapter. I also have two old nVidia GeForce4 MX 4000 (nv19pl) cards in my two PCI slots with two monitors connected to them respectively. I installed the legacy (and proprietary) nVidia drivers (the nvidia-96 package) that claims to support these old cards.
Now the question is how to get X configured to use all adapters (using two different drivers) so I can use all three monitors (and is this even possible)?
From what I've read, it looks like I'll have to write an xorg.conf file since the nVidia driver doesn't support the auto-magic configuration supported by other drivers. On this site:
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config
it says that on 10.10 I just need to write an xorg.conf "containing only those sections and options that you need to override Xorg's autoconfigurated settings".
So, does this mean I can get away with only including the nVidia-specific configuration stuff and all else will get auto-configured? Or, will providing a config with a "Device" section overrule the auto-magic from detecting/using the Intel adapter?
I ran the included nvidia-xconfig to generate a basic, nVidia-specific xorg.conf but I'm hesitant to reboot with it in place, suspecting I'll have a screwed up display. Also, is there any way (any tool or command) to generate an xorg.conf from the current, auto-configured running state of an X session? If I have to write a full, complete config, I'd rather start with one that includes everything that's been auto-detected thus far (and merge it with my nVidia version).
Anyhow, any info and thoughts are greatly appreciated (as are answers).
Best Answer
First, nvidia-xconfig will have saved a backup of your original xorg.conf file. You might check that this is so before proceeding, but even if it didn't keep a backup the old file is most likely the default anyway.
Next, if you restart X and the display is broken, make sure that you can get to another console and / or kill the X server. I recommend you test whether Ctrl+Alt+F2 works to switch to another console. It might also be a good idea to set up an ssh server on the machine if you haven't already, so that you can login even if the console is unresponsive (I've seen X misconfiguration cause X to ignore keyboard events).
Lastly, yes, there is a way to autogenerate a new xorg.conf file: delete the existing file and restart X. X will attempt to autodetect all settings and write an xorg.conf if it does not detect one. If it turns out that the xorg.conf generated by nvidia-xconfig does not support the Intel device and the old xorg.conf does not support the nVidia devices, you can try to
diffthe new file against the old one andpatchthe differences into the old file.