ubuntu-x-swat team mailing list archive

[Bryce Harrington <bryce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Joshua, please post your Xorg.0.log from both with my PPA and without.

(You should always post your Xorg.0.log with X bugs.)

On Sun, Oct 25, 2009 at 02:43:18AM -0000, Joshua Harding wrote:
> I have encountered this bug as well.
> 
> # lspci
> 04:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G94 [GeForce 9600 GT] (rev a1)
> 05:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G94 [GeForce 9600 GT] (rev a1)
> 
> Worked around by adding the following to xorg.conf
> 
> Section "Device"
> 	Identifier "Configured Video Device"
> 	Busid "PCI:5:0:0"
>         Driver "nvidia"
> EndSection
> 
> Tried both of Bryce Harrington's PPA patches but without the stanza
> added to xorg.conf they had no effect. Currently using the 'high' bus
> ID.
> 
> -- 
> X server aborts if two primary devices found
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/459512
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
> 
> Status in ???xorg-server??? package in Ubuntu: In Progress
> Status in xorg-server in Ubuntu Karmic: In Progress
> 
> Bug description:
> [Problem]
> 
> If multiple video devices are present, X will look to see which is marked primary in the BIOS.  If neither are so marked, or both are marked primary, X doesn't know what to do and aborts with an error such as this in Xorg.0.log:
> 
> (!!) More than one possible primary device found
> (--) PCI: (0:1:0:0) 1002:9400:1002:2552 ATI Technologies Inc R600 [Radeon HD 2900 Series] rev 0, Mem @ 0xc0000000/268435456, 0xfcce0000/65536, I/O @ 0x0000a000/256, BIOS @ 0x????????/131072
> (--) PCI: (0:2:0:0) 1002:9400:1002:2552 ATI Technologies Inc R600 [Radeon HD 2900 Series] rev 0, Mem @ 0xd0000000/268435456, 0xfcde0000/65536, I/O @ 0x0000b000/256, BIOS @ 0x????????/131072
> Primary device is not PCI
> ...
> 
> (II) VESA: driver for VESA chipsets: vesa
> (II) FBDEV: driver for framebuffer: fbdev
> (II) Primary Device is: 
> (WW) Falling back to old probe method for vesa
> (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fbdev
> ...
> (EE) open /dev/fb0: No such file or directory
> (EE) No devices detected.
> 
> Fatal server error:
> no screens found
> 
> 
> [Discussion]
> For some additional background on this class of issues, bug 267241 is worth reviewing.  During Jaunty development we found that ALL dual-card setups were broken, including ones with primary/secondary states properly set.
> 
> As a temporary fix, I made a patch that simply prevented it from aborting in this case, by just selecting the card with the highest BusID.  The problem with the patch is that it could cause X to boot with the secondary card even if the primary was properly marked.  But at least it prevented X from failing to start up.
> 
> However, a patch from fedora turned up in time for inclusion in Jaunty, that gave a mostly-better solution, by adding code to query bios and detect the primary card and use it.  We felt this to be a more elegant solution so this was the patch we shipped in Jaunty.  Debian also picked up this patch.
> 
> This patch has one flaw however - it still exits out in the specific condition that both cards are PCI (as opposed to one PCI / one VGA), and neither card are marked primary.  While this sounds unusual, it does appear in the wild; see attached Xorg.0.log and lspci for example.
> 
> [Proposal]
> The solution I used originally to just force X to pick the one with the highest bus id would work on top of the fedora patch.  In fact, using that plus the fedora patch together gives us a best of both worlds solution since together they cover each other's flaws.
> 
> There is still one (potential) issue that it could select the wrong device as primary, if neither device is specified as primary, and if the expected primary has the lower busid.  But in this case the bug will be much less severe; instead of not booting at all, it will boot up but just have the monitors reversed from what the user expects.

-- 
X server aborts if two primary devices found
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/459512
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