How can I turn on pc into two (effecively)?

From Chris Gibbs

Answered By Jimmy O'Regan, Jim Dennis

Hi ya,

I have a dual headed system. I am not really happy with xinerama cause having a different resolution on each monitor does not make sense for me, and having two seperate Desktops for a single X session seems limiting. Neither solution works well for apps like kwintv.

But this is linux! I don't just want to have cake and eat it I want the factory that makes it! What I really want is to have a ps2 mouse and keyboard associated with one monitor and associate a usb mouse and keyboard with the other monitor and have ability not just to run X from each, but to have text mode available also.

Idea also being I could have text mode session and X session at the same time, that way I can have kwintv fullscreen and play advmame in svga mode full screen at the same time

So how do I initialise the second video card (one pci, one agp) so I can make it tty2 monitor or similar?

[Jimmy] Google

http://www.google.com/linux?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=two+keyboards+two+mice+two+keyboards&btnG=Google+Search

came up with these links: http://www.ssc.com/pipermail/linux-list/1999-November/028191.html http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/3100/1

Am I greedy or wot?

[Jimmy] Nah, cost effective. "Able to maximise the potential of sparse resources". Some good CV-grade B.S.

These links are to articles about X, I already know I can have X however I want it accross the monitors. Thats easy...

What I want is seperate text mode consoles, so at risk of repeating myself how do I initialise the second video card for text mode (not for X) and how do I associate it with specific tty's

[Jimmy] Well, you could set up the first set for the console and use the second for X Okay, not what you asked . So, to your actual question.

The device should be /dev/fb1, or /dev/vcs1 and /dev/vcsa1 on older kernels. You should have better luck with a kernel with Framebuffer support - according to the Linux Console Project (http://linuxconsole.sourceforge.net) there's hotplug support & multiple monitor support. The Framebuffer HOWTO has a section on setting up two consoles (http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Framebuffer-HOWTO-14.html). The example focuses on setting up dual headed X again, but it should contain what you need - "an example command would be "con2fb /dev/fb1 /dev/tty6" to move virtual console number six over to the second monitor. Use Ctrl-Alt-F6 to move over to that console and see that it does indeed show up on the second monitor."

[JimD] It's serendipitous that yhou should ask this question since I just came across a slightly dated article on how to do this:

http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/3100/1

Some of the steps in this process might be unnecessary in newer versions of XFree86 and the kernel. I can't tell you for sure as I haven't tried this. Heck, I haven't even gotten around to configuring a dual headed Xinerama system, yet.

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