Arch Linux Hydra Build

52 Comments

Reality Master · September 30, 2016 at 5:47 pm

Turn a couple of those monitors 90°. If your setup isn’t soul draining and performance isn’t horrific, I’ll switch to nvidia.

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godlikemouse · October 1, 2016 at 5:38 am
So far everything has been awesome. I use this setup all day everyday, no issues.
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shellkr · October 1, 2016 at 3:46 am

This is some serious shit! Looks awesome!

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godlikemouse · October 1, 2016 at 5:36 am
Thanks man 🙂
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Guy · October 1, 2016 at 8:02 am

I’ve got a dual-monitor setup with a GTX750TI, but whenever I try to do a full-screen game it picks whichever monitor is at 0,0 — basically I can only play a game on one monitor. Any idea how I could get programs to recognize both screens as a single monitor with a large resolution? It’s great for work otherwise, but it seems like a bit of a waste for gaming.

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godlikemouse · October 9, 2016 at 1:08 pm
Hi Guy,
Sure, it really depends on the driver and the settings you have available. If you have an option available to compose both monitors into a single screen “Screen0” then you should be able to run across both. You may also want to try a different desktop to see if it has built in support for it.
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greg · October 2, 2016 at 5:02 am

You’re a lifesaver! I’ve spent six weeks trying to figure out how to use multiple GPUs together. Have you tried any other desktops? How did you know which desktops support multiple GPUs?

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godlikemouse · October 9, 2016 at 1:06 pm
Awesome! Glad to help. The multiple GPU desktop was really just trial and error. I started with Gnome, then tried KDE, then tried Fluxbox (success) then tried XFCE4 (success). If there’s a specific desktop you’d like to try just go for it and see if it works 🙂
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Tyler · October 3, 2016 at 4:30 am

Well done! Looks great!

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godlikemouse · October 9, 2016 at 1:05 pm
Thanks man 🙂
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Technicus · October 6, 2016 at 7:26 pm

Hey, can you give me some tips?

I have a Radeon RX 460 and I am trying to setup 3 monitors. I can only get 2 at a time.

Properly configuring the xorg.conf file would more than likely be how to get it to work, but it is a mystery to me.

Here is the system configuration information: .

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godlikemouse · October 10, 2016 at 9:18 am
Hi Technicus,
Unfortunately, your system information didn’t make it into the comment. However, have you tried running the ATI Catalyst software, it would probably help you automated the changes you’re looking to make for the Xorg.conf. Also, what distro are you running? I might be able to find something else to help in the event that the Catalyst software doesn’t work for you.
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Technicus · October 14, 2016 at 4:57 am
https://gist.github.com/Technicus/e3444d920fb9e4d9bcb536617983c75a
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Technicus · October 17, 2016 at 5:40 pm
I asked over on the Arch forum . . . maybe you have some ideas? Also, how do you setup the daisy chain?
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1662182#p1662182
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godlikemouse · October 17, 2016 at 6:42 pm
Hi Technicus,
Once you have your monitors daisy chained (physically connected), they should show up as individual display devices when you run “xrandr”. You should see something that matches at least the count of daisy chained devices displayed. Are you seeing that?
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Technicus · October 24, 2016 at 3:33 pm
Hey thanks!
I have the devices connected with a display-port hub, but they only show up as one so all screens are identical. How do I get the system to recognize that there are multiple screens?

Zacariaz · October 9, 2016 at 7:48 am

This is awesome however I’m not convinces I understand how this configuration works in practice.
Each card take care of 4 monitors. Check
Each card individually works with those 4 monitors as one screen. Check.
This obviously causes problems, as the two cards don’t actually work together, as I understand it at least.

But then you found a solution, another driver as it were, but while it didn’t enable SLI, it still enabled you to somehow use the two cards as one? Am I completely missing the something here, or is it reasonable to be confused?

At any rate it obviously works, which is very interesting to me, but are there really no limitations that you’ve experienced? Could you for example, theoretically at least, play a game in full screen mode, covering all 8 monitors, or how about just a movie? I know it wouldn’t be a practical application in your case, but for what I have in mind, it actually would.

Another question…
Do you think something similar would be possible using AMD cards instead?
I’m asking for a number of reason, partly because I believe that AMD will become the high end graphics of choice for Linux users in the near future, as they seem to have turned over a new leaf, and because the monitors I’m interested in uses freesync/adaptive sync, as opposed to Nvidias proprietary gsync, or whatever it’s called. Nvidia could chose to simply play ball, but I rather doubt it, so AMD will likely be preferable for me in the years to come.

Also what I really want to do involves only 3 screens, but basically the same amount of pixels, so to speak, so I would rather like to split it up on two or three cards.

Anyway, best of luck and best regards.

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godlikemouse · October 9, 2016 at 1:04 pm
Hi Zacariaz,
I see where you might be a little confused, basically what I was able to do was to take the 2 separate GPUs and compose them into a single screen by using Nvidia’s Base Mosaic setting.
Regarding playing games across all screens, I don’t do that, I usually just send all my gaming directly to one screen. I have however watched movies across all screens and there was no issue with that. I tend not to game across multiple monitors because I don’t like the break across the screens when I’m gaming, I have a large screen LCD that I play games on, this is just for work (and some fun) mainly.
I’ve heard people complaining about AMD video cards and I myself haven’t had good luck with AMD as a whole so I tend to stay clear of them. I have however seen that they have Catalyst support available that might be able to do what you’re trying to do. My setup doesn’t have anything proprietary outside the Nvidia video cards and drivers themselves, the monitors are just vanilla with DisplayPort 1.2 support.
Hope this helps.
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Zacariaz · October 14, 2016 at 5:30 am
I was more interested whether or not it was possible, not to actually game over multiple monitors, at least not with a setup like yours. 😉
Glad to hear that apparently it is possible.
As for the AMD question, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, but in general I’ve heard that the new driver, albeit not at all perfect yet, works rather well, so I suppose it just a matter of AMD implementing all of the relevant technologies, which I do believe they will, unlike Nvidia I’m sorry to say.
Anyway, thanks for the reply.
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BigRed · October 21, 2016 at 12:29 pm

Help with Error message

Your machine is an awesome build.

I need help with my machine. After the build-out, I could not install linux mint 18 – cinnamon on it. I am able to boot from a DVD, however when the machine tries to open a live session the computer states unknown chipset and gives a black screen.

After changing the boot path with “nomodeset”. I am able to boot into a live session (with default mint username and password). However, the live session freezes to a black screen and no output to the monitor.

Also, there is not any graphic card on the motherboard, so I can not bypass the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 card.

Any help installing linux mint 18 – cinnamon will be welcomed.

Machine:
Processor : Intel® Core™ i7-6800K Processor (6x 3.40GHz/15MB L3 Cache) – Intel® Core™ i7-6800K w/ Intel Performance Tuning Protection
Processor Cooling: Asetek 550LC (Standard 120mm Fan)
Memory: 32 GB [4 GB x8] DDR4-2800 ADATA XPG
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 – 6GB (VR-Ready)
Motherboard : ASUS X99-E — 3x PCIe x16, 5x USB 3.0, 1x USB 3.1, 1x M.2
Power Supply: 1000 Watt – EVGA 1000 GQ – 80 PLUS Gold; Full Modular Advance Cabling Options
Primary Hard Drive: 256 GB Samsung 850 Pro SSD — Read: 550MB/s, Write: 520MB/s – Single Drive
Optical Drive: 24X Super Multi Interal DVD Rewriter Optical Drive – Black
Sound Card: 3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard
Network Card: Onboard LAN Network (Gb or 10/100)

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godlikemouse · October 21, 2016 at 12:35 pm
Hi BigRed,
I wouldn’t think the Video Card would be a problem at this point. Setting the nomodeset was definitely a good call to bypass any video issues however, being that the machine is hanging on a black screen I’m leaning more towards the problem being something else. If I were you, the first thing I would do is switch media, maybe do a bootable USB drive or something, that way you can try a few different approaches without using up DVDs. Next, burning a new ISO image to your media and try it again, just to make sure the media is bad. You may also want to try a previous version (or perhaps another distro just to verify). If this still goes black, you may have a bad piece of hardware in the mix. Perhaps RAM or something else, I’m not sure. Let me know how it goes and we’ll see if we can move forward.
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BigRed · October 23, 2016 at 10:33 am
Hi godlikemouse,
Some other information, i did an integrity check on the boot DVD and it passed, the boot DVD should not be bad. Also, I am thinking that changing the motherboard with one that has a built graphic card should help, provided the driver for that graphics card is located within Linux Boot kernel. What do you think about that? I am looking at the Intel H110, B150, H170, and Z170 chipsets.
I will also try burning a new ISO image from a different source.
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Malcolm Dean · March 1, 2017 at 5:57 pm

What about Wayland? When X goes away, will you have to redo a configuration file? I found that Fedora had the best configuration tool, but would not retain settings for my four monitors.

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godlikemouse · March 2, 2017 at 6:31 am
Hi Malcolm,
I’m not sure, it really depends on the details of its implementation. I was unable to get Wayland to work at all with multiple monitors. I’m hoping moving forward that they realize most modern setups are going to require multi-monitor support to some degree. Regarding configuration, I just used the nvidia-xcconfig and nvidia-settings tools. They made customization and position of the monitors painless, even with my setup.
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Malcolm Dean · March 26, 2017 at 2:31 pm
There are two components to my findings.
1. Linux can “brick” some computers. Read this:
http://www.shallowsky.com/linux/x-screen-blanking.html
If the backlight turns off, the problem isn’t the hardware: it’s just that Xorg, for reasons unknown, isn’t really using DPMS when it says it will. A little googling showed dozens of people reporting this on video cards from at least four different manufacturers, so it’s not an isolated occurrence. Nobody seems to have an explanation or a cure. Some people say that eventually the backlight does turn off, but with a delay much much longer than the one that’s set (e.g. they set the off timeout to 10 minutes, and their screen blanks at 10 minutes, then the backlight finally turns off at 30 minutes or an hour). That’s not really very useful, and it doesn’t even happen on all machines. On my laptop, even that doesn’t seem to happen; the backlight stays on for as long as I’ve tested it.
[ The blanking can also be triggered by re-orienting one monitor. I have four 4K monitors, and I disconnected one to achieve a fairly “standard” setup. But when I rotate the remaining third monitor 90 degrees, all screens go blank immediately. — Malcolm ]
My workstation is now effectively “bricked” because no matter what OS I install, the screens go blank after a few minutes. This applies to Ubuntu, Antergos,Mint 18.1, MX-16, etc., etc. … I have no idea what setting could possibly persist past wiping the drive and installing a completely new distro. It’s a mystery.
2. It appears that distributions are not tested with more than three monitors, and often the three monitors are tested only in landscape orientation, not mixed orientation:
3. With my four 27″ Dell and Acer hidef monitors, I tested about a dozen current distros from Fedora 25 to Ubuntu 16.04/16.10 to Debian and Arch derivatives. The results were similar for my Nvidia M.2000 and AMD W5100 cards.
4. NO distro could configure AND RETAIN a four-monitor setup. Fedora 25 has the best configuration utility by far, but it will not save the configuration for the next boot. See these Red Hat bugs:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1341529
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?component=xorg-x11-drv-ati&product=Red%20Hat%20Enterprise%20Linux%206
5. The utility found in Ubuntu, Mint, and others does not easily move and re-orient the monitors. Mint will recognize three monitors, but the fourth monitor simply blinks on and off. Sometimes, when re-orienting the monitors and saving the configuration incrementally, when the fourth monitor was re-oriented and the configuration saved, the workstation went dark and unusuable. A cold reboot would allow several more minutes of usability.
6. Back in 2016, a consultant investigated this problem for me, and reported: “That’s the same bug that happened to me earlier– it doesn’t reboot, it logs you out and back in.” He eventually got Mint 17.3 working with the old AMD driver by editing the X conf file. I was forced to upgrade 17.3 for other (USB and new AMD drivers) issues, and have found nothing that works properly ever since.
7. I am very sad to say that Linux and/or X have failed me completely. My workstation has now been out of service for about 60 days. To claim to be a modern, capable desktop OS, Linux should be able to automagically recognize, orient, and save, more than four mixed monitors.
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godlikemouse · March 26, 2017 at 5:44 pm
Hi Malcolm,
I’ve yet to see Linux ever brick a machine. I’ve seen Linux installed incorrectly or not functioning properly due to updates, but I never seen Linux destroy hardware. One thing to keep in mind is that newer monitors are no longer just monitors. Many of them are now smart to semi-smart monitors which remember connections and persist/cache setting options. If I were you I would do the following:
First exit Xorg.
Once at the command line and once you can see your terminal on at least one monitor, rotate your screens.
Next, go into your xconfig and modify you monitor section appropriately to reflect you new settings / monitor rotation settings.
If you don’t know how to do that, then just disable them in the xconfig then load Xorg back up.
Once Xorg is back up, run a UI utility to handle the setup more gracefully. I recommend using a utility directly for the video card chipset you are using. For example: I use nvidia-settings.
Your graphics specific application should allow you to reconfigure rotated screens, etc. pretty painlessly.
If you need any assistance in this area or more specifics, please feel free to ask.
One last thing, which desktop are you trying to run 4 monitors on? I’ve found that many don’t support anything more than 2-3 monitors well. One that does not seem to care how many monitors you throw at it is XFCE4 if you’d like to give that a try.
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Malcolm · March 27, 2017 at 12:16 am
Before editing X, I have to achieve a usable machine. As with the link I included, the machine runs for several minutes, then goes blank. I wiped the boot partition and installed a new OS, but the condition persists, as noted in the shallow sky link. Other users have experienced this, on various hardware.
Re X, why would Mint see only three monitors, leaving the fourth flashing on and off. Is that an X effect?

godlikemouse · March 27, 2017 at 8:58 am
Hi Malcolm,
This is sounding more and more like hardware failure to me. I’m assuming you’re not overclocking, if you are go back to default voltages and settings and try that. Otherwise, if your Linux install is still unstable in TTY mode without even launching X, then I would start investigating hardware issues. First and foremost, make sure you have enough power to drive all of your devices. Ensure your PSU can power your monitor setup. You can either add up the voltage and do the math or the easiest way to test this of course is to remove all but one monitor. If the issue still persists, then move deeper into pulling hardware. I’d personally start with RAM at that point, remove all but one stick. If the issue still persists swap RAM. If you’re absolutely certain that it’s a Linux issue after trying what I’ve suggested. Then I would install Windows 10, it’s free for a few days until you have to register it which would give you enough time to ensure that it’s not a hardware configuration issue. If Windows 10 barfs, then it’s definitely a hardware issue. Otherwise if it works fine, then it’s probably a configuration issue. In which case I would go as barebones as possible hardware wise, install Linux and begin adding back devices until the issue occurs. Then you’ll know from where the issue stems. The only other thing I can suggest, is if you want to post your complete build specs I can have a look and see if there’s anything that stands out as a possible issue.
As to why would Mint see only three monitors. I’ve seen this happen with different desktop environments. Some only support up to 3 monitors well if at all. Gnome does this as well. I was originally using Gnome until I did my Hydra build, but after adding the fourth monitor, I just could not get Gnome to use it no matter what I did. Try using XFCE4 and see if that fixes the fourth monitor issue for you.

Malcolm Dean · March 27, 2017 at 1:50 pm
Thanks much. I’m replacing the mobo entirely to elminate the hardware uncertainty.
As for Gnome, I found that Fedora 25 manages four monitors very well, but for some reason it will not save the configuration. If it had, none of this might have occurred.

godlikemouse · March 28, 2017 at 8:57 am
Hi Malcolm,
That’s one of the main reasons I stay away from RedHat OS, I switched over to Arch Linux a while back and I’ve never looked back. Overall, much better support in my opinion. Let me know if there’s anything else I can help with. Good luck.

Malcolm Dean · April 21, 2017 at 12:02 pm
Following your advice, I’m moving to Manjaro. I read on their site a comment that the Cinnamon edition can handle high dpi monitors, but the XFCE edition cannot. Are the monitors in your photo high dpi?

godlikemouse · April 21, 2017 at 12:34 pm
Hi Malcolm,
I’m not running HiDPI monitors, but I don’t think XFCE will have a problem running it. I see settings under the themes for HiDPI, so I would assume it would. I know Gnome and a few others support it so I would be really surprised if it didn’t work out.

Darios Plata · September 11, 2019 at 4:09 pm

I have been trying to make Debian 10 to work with 4 monitors, I’ve try KDE, Gnome, I’ve use default settings and tweaks, I’ve also try removing all graphics drivers and use only nVidia drivers free and non-free… sometimes the second card is registered but the monitors are black can’t see nothing but the pointer, on different configuration I can see the wallpaper and cursor but can’t share windows on the second video card, even the little pop-up menu shows on the first video card and not on the second video card even when screen focus is on… so after a few days, I move to Ubuntu and woow! everything seems to be working until after the login screen… all monitors works but one, the refresh rate it not correct, I have try xrandr to change the RFR but it doesn’t do it, I even changed manually on the monitors file but nothing happens, after reboot every change goes back, the refresh rate set is 59.9 but the monitor manufacture says is 75, right now everything on that monitor looks just diagonal lines… to be honest I really really want to use Debian…

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godlikemouse · September 11, 2019 at 4:24 pm
You should be able to use Debian. You may however, want to try a different desktop like XFCE. Either that or perhaps try using nvidia-settings to manage your desktop. It may also help to turn mosaic under nvidia-settings. If you find that nvidia-settings fixes your issue, then you can save your configuration file and then move it to the xorg config folder usually located at /etc/X11/xorg.conf
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Darios Plata · October 4, 2019 at 11:47 am
I finally had some time to play with that, I when fro Debian 10 with xFCE, I love it!… clean and right to the point!, there is onr more thing I can’t figure it out… I did my xorg.conf via terminal, and I boot to the graphics only 3 monitors where on, my “metamodes” is too large, may be because each monitor are way too different non of them has the same resolution, nor the refresh rates, this set up is mainly for hardware testing and programming, so, my metamodes goes a bit more than 900 characters, I think that is way my last monitor doesn’t get to turn on…it is there, I can see it on the list, but can’t turn it on or use it..
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godlikemouse · October 4, 2019 at 12:41 pm
Hmmm, I’m not sure about that issue. If you’re using Nvidia graphics card you could always try the nvidia-settings GUI to handle that for you. Otherwise it might just be something specific to your monitors or to your graphics card itself.
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Darios Plata · October 5, 2019 at 2:33 pm
when i use the nvidia GUI it saves everything, by everythinSg I mean all possible metamodes, and that is a lot, I think that the other problem is that ont monitor is a class CTR I mean is like 12 years old, “Flatron L1718S”, when I re-do the xorg to use only what I want not the extra data everything seems to be working fine, except for that monitor, when I force to use that monitor it creates a virtual monitor, do you remember when the first flat screen came up they had a feature called picture in picture, one where able to watch a full screen one channel and on top of that there was a little window with a different channel on it… well, that’s what happen in my case but the actual monitor doesn’t turn on… I was laughing when that happen, any ways, I’ll work with only 3 monitors until I manages to get another… thanks for your help.

godlikemouse · October 5, 2019 at 4:42 pm
Sure thing. Let me know if there’s anything I can help further with. As far as the picture-in-picture old school CRT monitor goes, I really have no idea.

West-Light · July 23, 2020 at 1:47 pm

Hi, Im from Japan.
Im using DELL Precision WorkStation
CPU:Xeon X5690 * 2
mem:192GB
SSD:Intel SSD5 250GB
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
and want to use dual GTX graphicboard (ASUS GTX 1070 * 2) with 6 monitors.
(5 Philips 1920*1080 monitors and I-O DATA 1280*1024 monitor)
followings are ideal placements of monitors
————— —————
| Philips 1 s | | Philips 2 s |
————— ————— ————— —————
| Philips 1 f | | Philips 2 f | | Philips 3 f | | I-O DATA f |
————— ————— ————— ————–
(f means connected to first 1070, s means second 1070)

I connect 3 of 5 Philips and I-O DATA monitors to first GTX 1070 (DP, DP, HDMI, DVI for each), and others (2*Philips) to second 1070 (DP, HDMI for each).
But monitors connected second 1070 are not recognized by desktop-settings-monisettings or terminal command “xrandr” .
(NVIDIA X Server Settings recognizes second Philipses)

And following is /etc/X11/xorg.conf .

————————————————————————————————————————————
# nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings
# nvidia-settings: version 440.82

Section “ServerLayout”
Identifier “Layout0”
Screen 0 “Screen0” 0 0
Screen 1 “Screen1” 0 1080
InputDevice “Keyboard0” “CoreKeyboard”
InputDevice “Mouse0” “CorePointer”
Option “Xinerama” “0”
EndSection

Section “Files”
EndSection

Section “Module”
Load “dbe”
Load “extmod”
Load “type1”
Load “freetype”
Load “glx”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”

# generated from default
Identifier “Mouse0”
Driver “mouse”
Option “Protocol” “auto”
Option “Device” “/dev/psaux”
Option “Emulate3Buttons” “no”
Option “ZAxisMapping” “4 5”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”

# generated from default
Identifier “Keyboard0”
Driver “kbd”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”

# HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
Identifier “Monitor0”
VendorName “Unknown”
ModelName “IODATA LCD-AD172SE”
HorizSync 31.0 – 83.0
VertRefresh 55.0 – 75.0
Option “DPMS”
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier “Device0”
Driver “nvidia”
VendorName “NVIDIA Corporation”
BoardName “GeForce GTX 1070”
BusID “PCI:4:0:0”
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “Screen0”
Device “Device0”
Monitor “Monitor0”
DefaultDepth 24
Option “Stereo” “0”
Option “nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder” “DFP-4”
Option “metamodes” “DVI-D-0: nvidia-auto-select +5760+0, HDMI-0: nvidia-auto-select +3840+0, DP-1: nvidia-auto-select +0+0, DP-3: nvidia-auto-select +1920+0”
Option “SLI” “Off”
Option “MultiGPU” “Off”
Option “BaseMosaic” “off”
SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “Screen1”
Device “Device1”
Monitor “Monitor1”
DefaultDepth 24
Option “Stereo” “0”
Option “nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder” “DFP-6”
Option “metamodes” “HDMI-0: nvidia-auto-select +1920+0, DP-3: nvidia-auto-select +0+0”
Option “SLI” “Off”
Option “MultiGPU” “Off”
Option “BaseMosaic” “off”
SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

————————————————————————————————————————————
It would be great, if you could !!

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godlikemouse · July 27, 2020 at 2:32 pm
Hi West-Light,
What display manager are you using? I ran into issues trying to get multiple monitors working with most window managers. The only one that seemed to work was XFCE4.
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West-Light · August 5, 2020 at 8:54 am
Thank you reply my Question.
I used gdm3 display manager, so hit
sudo apt install -y xubuntu-desktop
command.
And reboot, but unfortunattelly 2 monitors not reflected.
By the way, in your successful xorg.conf, the sentence in the Section “Screen”
Option “metamodes” “GPU-05f6316a-a480-b2c4-7618-d19e2bd555aa ……nvidia-auto-select +0+0″”
What does “GPU-05f6316a-a480-b2c4-7618-d19e2bd555aa” mean?
I would appreciate it if you could give me advice
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West-Light · August 12, 2020 at 1:19 am
Now, I’m using gdm3 manager.
Make the issue more easy, I connected only one monitor to GPU-1, and another one monitor to GPU-2.
・On the Ubuntu login screen, both monitors are active. I can move my mouse to the non-primary one, and the cursor is visible and identical to when it is on the primary monitor.
・When I login, the cursor on the secondary monitor reverts to a ‘X’ cursor and I cannot do anything but move it on that screen.
(X server settings shows nvidia driver version :440.100)
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godlikemouse · August 17, 2020 at 9:54 am
Hi West-Light,
I think so far your approach is good. To answer your question regarding the “metamodes”, that’s something that the NVidia configuration tool injects. I would suggest at this point trying to use the “NVIDIA X Server Settings” tool to arrange your monitors and compose them the way you would like. This should make configuring the layout and position of your monitors much easier. Once you have a monitor running on each GPU correctly, you should be able to configure the overall setup without too much difficulty. I personally started off with configuring 4 monitors on GPU-0, then configured the next 4 monitors on GPU-1. Once I had both GPUs running the monitors correctly, I composed both GPUs into a single set allowing me to move my mouse across all monitors and drag windows across all monitors. Hope this helps.
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motivegate · August 24, 2020 at 7:45 pm

Hi godlikemouse,

I’m planning to upgrade my setup. I’m new to linux and the command line.

I prefer solutions that are more plug-and-play. This is why I normally run Ubuntu.

I would like to run at least 4 monitors. I will be running multiple browsers and VMs (virtualbox and genymotion) simultaneously.

I have a budget of $3k to $5k for the build.

Can you recommend a forum that would have good advice about which components to choose for this build?

Thanks

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Ryan · January 18, 2021 at 10:15 am

Hi there,

Thanks for the post! I know this is a bit older, but I found this post because I’m trying to do something similar and running into issues with it. I actually posted in the Ubuntu forum referencing your post (https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2456629) with a bunch of info. Any chance you could throw me some advice? I think I’m pretty similar in setup (and have tried several), minus using Ubuntu plus newer drivers etc. (using nvidia-driver-460). I tried modeling my xorg.conf after yours (https://pastebin.com/1AzqRwd4) to no avail. (You don’t think it’s driver issues with Ubuntu vs Arch do you?) Are you still using this setup? Are you using updated drivers or xorg.conf now?

Thanks in advance for any assistance!

Ryan

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godlikemouse · January 18, 2021 at 10:29 am
Hi Ryan,
I am still using this setup and the drivers have been updated, mainly due to platform updates. One thing to note about your setup that differs from mine is that you’re using 2 different video cards, which may or may not be an issue, but it’s something to note. Here’s what I would do to solve your issues. I would start off with using a single video card (you can keep both in the system) and focus on monitors connected to that card. See if you can get a single monitor up and running. Then from there launch the NVidia X Server Settings application which should be available from nvidia-utils. That should give you a nice UI way to see your cards and configure individual monitors. Let me know if this helps and how far you get and I’ll see if there’s anything more I can do to help.
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Ryan · January 18, 2021 at 7:38 pm
Thanks for the quick response! I should have been more clear (more details in my forum post). I do have 4 monitors working, or 2; just not all 6 unless I use Xinerama which is pretty rough. I did think about the two cards issue but it seemed like since I could get them to work individually I should be able to get them to work together. I actually just went ahead and ordered another P1000 that’ll be here in a week, I figure if I haven’t figured it out by then I can try that route.
So on my nvidia-settings UI, I can only put a max of 4 monitors per screen, it says the other monitors (from the other card) have to go into a new X screen. Is your GUI different on that? Specifically I can’t figure out how to add the BaseMosaic option you mentioned through the UI. This is what makes me wonder if you may be right about it being related to hardware. ARandR and XFCE display settings do show the other monitors, but enabling them doesn’t take.
How did you get your first take working with multiple X screens? It seems a bit like it was automatic for you, is that right? I’ve had trouble getting that sorted as well.
Thanks again!
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godlikemouse · January 18, 2021 at 9:23 pm
Hi Ryan,
No problem, glad to help (or at least try). So for me, the setup definitely was not automatic, it took me a bit to figure it out. Here are my current settings for the Nvidia X Server Settings in the event this helps:
https://imgur.com/wsqLde3.png
https://imgur.com/hJtdRnl.png
When I was originally setting this up, I had set each video card as its own screen, so basically GPU-0 became one set and GPU-1 became the other. I believe this is the same issue as you have described above. Then I enabled Base Mosaic to compose the 2 separate screens into one logical screen and allowed applications to be moved seamlessly across with this configuration. I think you’re getting close. Another issue I remember having was that XFCE4 tries to optimize things by creating a file called monitors.xml which can really mess things up. You may want to do a quick search and remove that file, it’s not needed. Let me know if this helps or if there’s more I can help with.
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Ryan · January 19, 2021 at 11:02 am
Ok, thanks for the screenshots, that was super helpful! I am missing the BaseMosaic option in my GUI, so it lead me to realizing that Mosaic does require identical GPUs (https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3580/~/how-to-configure-mosaic-on-linux). Hopefully once I get the new card things will go a bit smoother for me. Thanks for the tip on monitors.xml as well. I’ll report back!

godlikemouse · January 20, 2021 at 10:41 am
Awesome, glad to hear it. I thought the video cards might be an issue and it sounds like you’re definitely going to have it fixed soon. Please let me know if I can be of any further help.

Ryan · January 22, 2021 at 9:35 am
Good news! That second card came in and I was able to get it working with the 2 identical cards. Thanks for the nduge to buy that and the tips (and for sharing your awesome set up), really appreciate it!

godlikemouse · January 22, 2021 at 10:02 am
Awesome! So glad to hear it. My pleasure buddy, have a good one and enjoy the new setup 🙂