Primary display unusable with dualhead nvidia card and nv driver

[doveman]

Binary package hint: xserver-xorg-video-nv

Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex
xserver-xorg-video-nv v1:2.1.10-1ubuntu2

Nvidia FX5600, Dell D1226H monitor, Sony XBR800 TV

With both a fresh install and the Live CD, when I have both my VGA CRT monitor and my DVI CRT TV connected, the monitor display is just a mess of colour, as shown in the attached photo. Also, switching to a terminal window, once the screen is full, it stops refreshing or displaying any output and I have to switch to another terminal window and back again to see the response to each command I enter.

With the install, I can obtain a desktop by using the vga= switch, but there is no mouse pointer, which makes it impossible to use and it still had the terminal window problem as described above. With the LiveCD, if I boot into Safe mode it works using VESA, but only at 640x480 which is too small to be able to access some of the buttons on windows.

After reading Bug #43710 I tracked the problem down to my TV being connected on the secondary DVI port. Strangely, unplugging the TV power from the wall didn't help, so I guess it must hold a residual charge that still enables the PC to detect it. Disconnecting the DVI lead fixed it.

It seems that when both my TV and monitor are connected, what happens is that xorg uses the TV as the main display (which displays correctly) but it's trying to clone it on the monitor, which leads to the problems mentioned.

I'll upload a few log and conf files in additional posts.

------
X.Org X Server 1.5.2
Release Date: 10 October 2008
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.24-19-server i686 Ubuntu
Current Operating System: Linux ubuntu 2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP Fri Oct 24 06:42:44 UTC 2008 i686
Build Date: 24 October 2008 08:00:16AM
xorg-server 2:1.5.2-2ubuntu3 (<email address hidden>)
 Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
 to make sure that you have the latest version.
Module Loader present

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ lspci -nn| grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation NV31 [GeForce FX 5600] [10de:0312] (rev a1)

[doveman (doveman007)]

Hmm, the terminal window problem has reared it's ugly head again, making terminals almost unusable.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

[This is an automated message]

Hi doveman007,

Please attach the output of `lspci -vvnn` too.

[doveman (doveman007)]

Hi Bryce

Here's the lspci -vvnn from a LiveCD boot and from a working installation.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Thank you for reporting this issue about xserver-xorg-video-nv. Starting
with Lucid, Ubuntu is transitioning to using the -nouveau video driver
by default instead of -nv. The reason for this change is because
upstream development for the -nv driver has been quite slow. We are
quite pleased with the upstream development speed for -nouveau, and hope
this will translate into swifter bug fixes as well.

Because of this, I'm closing this bug report at this time. I'm marking
it wontfix because what you describe is probably a valid issue, but we
do not have further plans to work on it in Ubuntu. If you would still like
to see this issue investigated, I would encourage you to file it
upstream at http://bugs.freedesktop.org/.