G400 dual-head Fedora 6 Xorg 7.1.1

[pete]

Over the past few years I've tried to upgrade my old Redhat-7.1 system to several Fedora releases, but always end up going back Redhat 7.1 because I can never get dual-head to work (it DOES work on my 7.1 system). I'm determined to get it going this time around with Fedora 6 (Xorg 7.1.1), but would appreciate some help.

I downloaded the 4.4.2 drivers from this site and ran the installer:

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matroxdriver_mga-x86_32-4.4.2-installer.run

I did not replace the existing mga_drv.so, since the one that came with Fedora 6 appeared to be newer. Do I need to replace it?

Here's ls and sum output for both mga_drv.so and mga_hal_drv.so.

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$ cd /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers
$ ls -l mga*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 165664 Dec 11 13:07 mga_drv.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 392051 Apr 25  2006 mga_hal_drv.so
$ sum -r mga*
30734   162 mga_drv.so
65489   383 mga_hal_drv.so

I ran "/usr/bin/X -configure" and moved /xorg.conf.new to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

I added the following to /etc/gdm/custom.conf (based on other posts I read), because I THINK I saw some message about that when I did the X -configure, but not 100% positive.

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[servers]
/usr/bin/X -ignoreABI

I've attached my /etx/X11/xorg.conf and /var/log/Xorg.0.log.

Thanks.

[tuxx-home.at]

I did not replace the existing mga_drv.so, since the one that came with Fedora
6 appeared to be newer. Do I need to replace it?

Of course.
The mga_drv.so on your system is a crippled one that does not support the
external loading of the mga_hal module. You definetly need this module as
stated in `man mga`:

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Support for the second head on G400 cards  requires  a  binary-only 
"mga_hal" module  that is available from Matrox


So that's why you need to overwrite your current mga_drv.so version with the
one shipped by the unofficial driver.

That's exactly why you get the following message in your logfile:

(EE) MGA(1): No open-source support for dualhead on this card, sorry

[pete]

Of course. The mga_drv.so on your system is a crippled one that does not support the external loading of the mga_hal module.

Thanks very much... that did the trick.

Now.. that it's working, I'm wondering if I can get "better" resolution. I'm currently using 1280x960 "millions of colors" on both screens. If I bump that up to 1400x1050 "millions" or "thousands" only one screen comes up. I'd like to use a resolution that preserves the 1.33 aspect ratio.

I've attached Xorg.0.log for both the 1280x960 case (works) and the 1400x1050 case (doesn't work). Is 1280x960 the best I can get?

[tuxx-home.at]

Thanks very much... that did the trick.

Great

Something unrelated to your problem:

(==) MGA(0): Using AGP 1x mode

You should increase the AGP transfer rate to whatever your card/motherboard
combination is capable of by adding the following option to both of your
device sections:

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Section "Device"
   [...]
   Option "AGPMode" "4"
   [...]
EndSection


Your amount of video memory is divided up unequally and maybe that's
a problem with high resolutions:

(--) MGA(0): Crtc2 will use 8192K of VideoRam
(--) MGA(0): VideoRAM: 24576 kByte

You could try to force an equal amount of VideoRam for both devices by
adding the following option to your _FIRST_ device section:

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Section "Device"
   [...]
   Option "Crtc2Half" "True"
   [...]
EndSection