Dual NVidia graphics cards in Ubuntu / xorg.conf mania

Posted by John Zwinck on Super User See other posts from Super User or by John Zwinck
Published on 2009-12-11T18:36:08Z Indexed on 2010/05/03 0:49 UTC
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I have two NVidia graphics cards:

  • Quadro NVS 295 (PCI Express, dual DisplayPort outputs)
  • GeForce FX 5200 (PCI, DVI and VGA outputs)

I have three identical monitors, two on DisplayPort and one on DVI.

I'm on Ubuntu Hardy (and cannot currently dist-upgrade for separate reasons). I use the "nvidia" driver.

What's new is the GeForce card and the third monitor. I currently have the dual DisplayPort monitors working fine. Here are the display-related parts of my xorg.conf:

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "Default Layout"
    Screen          "PCI-Express Screen" 0 0
# adding this makes X fail to start:  Screen "PCI Screen" 0
    Inputdevice "Generic Keyboard"
    Inputdevice "Configured Mouse"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load  "glx" # not sure why/if this is needed
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "DELL 2408WFP"
    Option  "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "NVIDIA Quadro NVS 295"
    Driver  "nvidia"
    Option  "RenderAccel" "true"
    Screen          0
    BusID           "PCI:2:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200"
    Driver  "nvidia"
    Option  "RenderAccel" "true"
    Screen          1
    BusID           "PCI:6:4:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "PCI-Express Screen"
    Device  "NVIDIA Quadro NVS 295"
    Monitor  "DELL 2408WFP"
    Defaultdepth 24
    Option  "TwinView" "True"
    Option  "UseEdidFreqs" "True"
    Option  "MetaModes" "1920x1200 +0+1200, 1920x1200 +0+0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "PCI Screen"
    Device  "NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200"
    Monitor  "DELL 2408WFP"
    Defaultdepth 24
    Option  "TwinView" "True"
    Option  "UseEdidFreqs" "True"
    Option  "MetaModes" "1920x1200 +0+0"
EndSection

I use nvidia-settings to configure my monitors, and it does not show the second GPU. lspci, though, shows:

02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 06fd
06:04.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200]

Which is where I got the BusID settings for the two devices (when I just had one device, I didn't have any BusID listed...and adding the BusID hasn't broken anything).

What am I missing? How can I make nvidia-settings show my second GPU so I can then configure its monitor?

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