[Discuss] NVidia 2 screen problem

[abreauj at gmail.com (John Abreau)]

i don't have any advice concerning the nVidia problem specifically, but
maybe something
like my home setup could work as an alternative solution.

On my desk I have two separate machines that share a single keyboard and
mouse,
thereby resembling a dual-monitor setup. The primary machine is a Linux
desktop,
and the secondary is a MacMini running MacOS. I use Synergy to share the
mouse
and keyboard; Synergy is essentially a stripped-down VNC daemon and client
that
only shares the keyboard and mouse, not the display.

The two displays are "connected" by a one-pixel-wide window along an edge
of each
monitor, so you simply drag the mouse across to the other monitor to switch
the focus
to the other machine.

You could run mythfrontend on a separate machine to drive the TV, and use
Synergy
to drive the other machine with the same keyboard and mouse as your desktop
machine.
It would feel the same as a dual-monitor setup with separate X sessions,
and I suspect
it would be more robust. As an added bonus, the distance between your TV
and your
desktop machine would no longer be constrained by the length of a video
cable.

If mythfrontend can be run from a cheap, low-power device like a Raspberry
Pi, then
you could do this cheaply and with zero additional footprint.




On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 10:40 PM, David Kramer <david at thekramers.net> wrote:

> My main machine (wopr, running Kubuntu 12.04) has a normal monitor and a
> TV hooked up to my nVidia card.  For a long time I've been
> mostly-successfully running the two screens in separate X sessions,
> because I want to be able to run mythfrontend maximized on my TV, and
> sometimes other programs.  I say mostly working, because I've ALWAYS had
> the following problems:
> - Obviously I can't move apps from one screen to another.  That would be
> cool but I understand why it doesn't work
> - No matter what I do, some apps refuse to appear on the TV.  No matter
> how I launch them or what I set $DISPLAY to, they always come up on my
> monitor instead of my TV.
>
> A few days ago, I experienced a problem where everything was working as
> before, but no windows on the TV could get keyboard input.  I can work
> them with the mouse, but not the keyboard.  That prevents me from doing
> things like exiting mythfrontend :)  I tried a few things but browsers,
> terminals, and editors would launch on the TV but never got keyboard
> input.  All keyboard input went to whatever app had focus on my monitor.
> Looking at the logs I see no problems with the keyboard.
>
> In desperation, I changed my nVidia settings to use TwinView.  I could
> then move windows between screens which was nice, but:
> - Switching desktops switched both screens, so if I was watching
> mythfrontend on the TV and wanted to switch to another desktop on my
> monitor, the TV would switch away from mythfrontend too.  In order to
> fix that, I then had to configure mythfrontend to run in a window
> slightly smaller than the screen so I could get window decorations so I
> could then tell it to appear on all desktops, but it looked like crap
> not being full screen, and it was a lot of work to set that up each time
> - When I would launch new windows on my monitor, they would often appear
> on the TV.  This is especially true of new Chrome windows.  The problem
> here is when I'm not watching mythfrontend. my TV is usually turned off,
> so I don't see those windows.  I could not find a way to tell the app or
> X to stay on the one screen.
>
> I thought I would retry separate X sessions again, so in the nVidia
> config program I set it up the way it used to be,  I still had the
> lack-of-keyboard problem, but now X doesn't come up when I start the
> computer up.  I have to run startx.  I know where the default runlevel
> USED to be stored, but now there's all that poorly-documented event
> driven crap I have no idea how to fix this.
>
> I'm willing to go in either direction (TwinView or separate X sessions)
> if the problems with them can be fixed (no keyboard, and new windows
> going to my TV, respectively).    Any ideas?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Log file, configured with separate X sessions:
> http://pastebin.com/QZN8qjZm
>
> My xorg.conf for TwinView: http://pastebin.com/JQV0xc4D
>
> My xorg.conf for separate monitors: http://pastebin.com/gy6DHXn6
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>



-- 
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
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