No Dualscreen-Twinview possible after Upgrade to nvidia-current 280.13

[Axel Pospischil]

Hello,

yesterday i did an upgrade from natty to oneiric.

Now twinview with nvidia-settings is not possible any more.

    - Oneiric 11.10 AMD 64 / Unity
    - Nvidia 280.13
    - Kernel 3.0.0-9-generic
    - Lenovo T61, 15,4 Zoll 1650x1050, Nvidia Quadro NVS 140
    - Monitor Samsung 1950x1080

If i configure the Samsung as second device an apply, my primary (laptop) screen turns black and on the samsungs screen i only see a "window" of the size of the laptop screen. All other area is black.

See screenshots attached.

Greets Axel

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: gnome-system-monitor 3.1.3-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-9.15-generic 3.0.3
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-9-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Sep 3 18:32:49 2011
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-system-monitor
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release amd64+mac (20110426)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=de_DE:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-system-monitor
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-08-20 (13 days ago)

[Axel Pospischil (apos)]

I could temporaryly solve the problem. I used nvidia-settings to save the configuration into an xorg.conf and rebooted the system.

I get three (!) error reports, that the given configuration could not be applied (indeed, it did!).

I tested if, on the fly changing of the configuration is possible (toggle dual screen / single screen): it is not. Doing this applies to the given bug report above.

Greets.

[Axel Pospischil (apos)]

Forgot to mention that I formerly used nvidia-current v. 270x from oneiric and kernel 3.x from oneiric under natty which worked without any problems.

[Axel Pospischil (apos)]

Background picture copyright: http://www.7themez.com/2009/12/best-of-national-geographic-2009.html

[Axel Pospischil (apos)]

Forgot to mention:

During the installation process, i had been asked which manager to use. I'd chosen lightdm. That left me with an unusable system, because the xserver went into an infinite loop.

Only if i switch to use gdm (dpkg-reconfigure lightdm), xserver starts.

[Axel Pospischil (apos)]

Update:

The bug seams to be a problem with Unity 3D.

Using Unity 2D or Gnome Shell everything works fine: can use nvidia-settings to change, add, remove monitors on the fly. Also the use of disper is possible.

Addendum:

If I play arround with nvidia-settings (under Unity 3d) I can get twinview working the following way
- moving the screens (see attached screenshot) together
- apply settings
- move screens side by side
- apply
- move the smaller screen on top / on bootom
- apply

Overall performance of 3d with nvidia 280.13 is poor (e.g. lt-Tab switcher). That indeed is an indicator

 I am writing this under the Gnome-Shell environment, because Unity 3D is not usable for me (crashes, Alt-Tab not working, cannot get minimised windows back, performance really bad, ...).

[Axel Pospischil (apos)]

Yesterday evening I installed a fresh ubuntu 11.04 beta1 on an __external usb drive__ for testing purpose:

- ligthdm works only with nouveau
- switching to nvidia-current bring up problems discribed above
- unity2d works, gnome-shell works

I tried to move all "/etc/lightdm" and "/etc/initramfs-tools" to my system, completely removed nvidia-current and nvidia-settings (purge) and reinstalled them.
I had to manuelly build the module via dkms because it didn't apply via jockey-gtk.

[Axel Pospischil (apos)]

On my machine tody I installed the latest nvidia-current and -settings version 275 from the ubuntu repositories.
I had to build an install them manually via dkms.

    dkms install -m nvidia-current --all

Using minimal xorg.conf:

    Section "Device"
  Identifier "Default Device"
 Option "NoLogo" "True"
    EndSection

Using twinview is still buggy, but works like described with some playing around in nvidia-settings (or apply on and on via disper-indicator for a few times).

After the updates of the last 2 days which contained some gnome-ui files it seams to be that the system is a little bit more stable.

I also found out, that the static application switcher was applied in ccsm. Deactivated it.
But that did not solve the problems with the overall performance and has nothing to do with twinview.

[Axel Pospischil (apos)]

Hello out there, some news about this:

1. __Tried nvidia driver from nvidia download:__
Yesterday I gave the subject another try uninstalled all nvidia-current/settings, downloaded the original nvidia 280.13 driver from the nvidia download page, compiled an installed it. The tool creates automatically an nvidia aware xorg.conf.

__Result:__
Same problems as described above.

2. __ Installed again 280.13/oneiric and Gnome Shell / Unity 2(!) D: __
It turns out after some hours/days of real work, that using these environments work flawlessly with the driver.
Hopefully I don't suffer from a hardware problem. But this point indicates, that this it not the fact.

__Conclusion:__
A. Switching back to Unity 3D there is an interesting issue:
just in the moment twinview turns out going to work - with the method described in #6 - compiz (unity?!) crashes.
You can have a look for the Xorg.0.log.old (with is the crashed unity session) whats going on there.
Xorg.0.log represents the gnome shell session.

SO FINALLY:

1. This seams not a bug with nvidia 280.13, this is __definitely a bug with Unity 3D AND nvidia driver__ (doesn't matter which version 275/280/285)!

2. The problem is device indepentend. I am working in different environments (office, at home, at school, doing courses with beamer). The problems are the same, no matter what type of second device i am using (vga/dvi, beamer/lcd). On the fly switching is not working, at least extremely buggy.

3. It turns out, working with an xorg file (constructed with nvidia-settings when you where happy to get a running twinview setting) boots flawlessly into a working environment (Untiy 3D), after logout/login/boot

4. Overall performance degraded (compared with natty / 270series of nvidia)

-> I will keep an eye on this issue an probably will file a bug against Unity 3D / nvidia.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Eric CHAMPAGNE (ericchampagne)]

I have exactly the same problem.
But when i change resolution of my second screen, application windows border disappear and i can't move any applications windows.

[Axel Pospischil (apos)]

Hello Eric,

what you see is unity crashing ... this should be fixed by the most recent updates.
Did you really update your system? Went your nvidia update correct (dkms)?
Did you read bug #813343?

[Eric CHAMPAGNE (ericchampagne)]

Hello Axel,

i've now read the bug #813343.
I've made:
   apt-get remove --purge nvidia-current nvidia-settings
And like you, I've searched for ALL occurences of nvidia*[current|settings] and removed them from the filesystem.
After reboot in Safe Mode:
   apt-get install nvidia-current

Twinview works only with Unity 2D and Gnome shell.

  -Linux oneiric 3.0.0-12-generic 64bits
  -nvidia-current 280.13-0ubuntu6

[Jorge Gustavo (jgr)]

Same here, Ubuntu 11.10, GeForce GT 425M, with nvidia-current 285.05.09-0ubuntu1~oneiric~xup1

Only after 2 or 3 attempts, I can get it working. Very annoying. I've tried to switch between Unity and gnome 3, but the behavior is the same.