Re: multiple coexisting vga devices

On Tue, Oct 02, 2007 at 09:57:33AM -0600, Brook Milligan wrote:
> I have a netbsd/amd64 machine with several vga cards (e.g., 2x Nvidia
> GeForce 7900 GTX (2 ports each), 1x Matrix G200 (4 ports)).  See the
> dmesg output below.  I am trying to get these all to work with X.
> Several issues arise.
> 
> First, I cannot seem to get the kernel to install different vga
> devices for the cards.  Is it possible to have multiple vga devices?

I've never heard of or seen such a thing.  The vga(4) driver
is mostly (totally?) for the console anyway.
 
> Second, should X see each port for the 7900 cards as a distinct
> device?

It doesn't appear to have multiple PCI functions ...
In any case this is more of a (XFree86?) X.org issue,
last I heard, X's nv(4) wasn't very good at anything
more than one head.

(Also, I hope the radeonhd driver will support dual heads.)

> (All 4 G200 ports can be made to work independently.)  If so,
> how are they addressed within the X config file? 

The 4 (totally independent :) ) G200s should (well, may)
work for a run-of-the-mill multi-head X server,
there are probably a good number of example configs
available on the interwebs.

> Is it possible that
> the cards require some sort of kernel setup in order to make them
> detectable by X?

Not usually.  Actually, I'm not sure what the kernel could even do.

> 
> Finally, with certain X configurations it seems that both 7900 cards
> are detected.  However, X apparently sees the second one at a pci
> address of 129:0:0 not at 7:0:0 as I would expect from the kernel.

I think you want to look at "bus number X" rather than "at pciX".

> (One port on the first card at 2:0:0 can be made to work or both ports
> on that card can be forced side-by-side using the DualHead hack.)

Oh, huh.

> Furthermore, X reports that the second card (129:0:0) has no memory.
> Does this mean that there are colliding pci resource issues?

Possibly, the whole 64-bit-ed-ness of your system makes
everything very interesting.  I know XFree86 on Alpha
was always "fun".  And until recently, a NetBSD/amd64
box w/ >3.5GiB RAM would just reboot when you tried
to start X.

> 
> If anyone has experience with multiple vga cards and X, I would
> appreciate some assistance.

My experience here mostly amounts to a few Matrox cards in one
old-ish i386 box.  And that seemed to work fine.

> 
> Thanks *alot* for your help.
> 
> Cheers,
> Brook

Hop that helped.

	Jonathan Kollasch

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