nv driver and randr support for dual screen / twinview setup

Hello,

I am searching for some precise and up-to-date documentation about
running nv driver for xserver-xorg with randr extension. I am trying to
make dual screen (or is it twinview?) work on my nvidia graphical board
since ages, to no avail, but I'm not even sure that the nv driver
supports randr for my board, so I seek your help for any information
about that before continuing. (I would rather like not use nvidia binary
driver.)

According to some google-found information, nv did not support randr1.2
except for G80 chipsets, at about mid 2007. BUT apparently it supports
randr1.2 on my machine, with my G6xxx card (more info below), but I may
be wrong. Has the support been added in the meantime? "man nv" does not
give the information. Searching the debian changelog
([url]http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/x/xserver-xorg-video-nv/xserver-xorg-video-nv_2.1.3-1/changelog[/url])
for randr neither.

So, my main question (for the moment) is: how can I find up-to-date
information about nv / randr compatibility? I know I can use google, and
that's what I did, but that most often does not yield "official"
informations, and certainly not "up-to-date".

- If not randr is not supported yet, how can I have any idea about when
will this compatibility be added? Is it in development right now,
planned but far away, never to be supported, ... ? Is there some nv
development mailing list where I could search for this kind of information?

- If randr1.2 is supported, then I will ask why I can't make it work on
my computer and give you more information about my setup, but let's
first check if indeed nv is compatible with randr1.2.

I use Debian testing. According to apt-show-versions:
xserver-xorg-core/testing uptodate 2:1.3.0.0.dfsg-12 ;
xserver-xorg-video-nv/testing uptodate 1:2.1.3-1 ;
libxrandr2/testing uptodate 2:1.2.2-1.

---
Appendix: why I think randr1.2 is supported on my computer?

According to Xorg.log:
~/$cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -i randr
(==) RandR enabled
(II) Initializing built-in extension RANDR
~/$

And according to xrandr himself:
~/$xrandr --version
Server reports RandR version 1.2
~/$

Does that mean for sure that my xserver-xorg has xrandr1.2 support
enabled and should work with my nv driver?

Thank you very much for any help / pointer. Also, if this newsgroup is
not the best place to ask such question, please give me some pointer as
well.
Olivier
(Please correct my English.)

In my case I could verify Xrandr is enabled and functional.
I use Ubuntu 8.04 (just updated from 7.10), not using any restricted/proprietary driver.

I managed with xrandr to change the resolution without restarting X:
The following command in the terminal changed the resolution to 1280 x 1024:
[code]xrandr -s 1280x1024[/code]

And the following command reverted the resolution to 1600 x 1200:
[code]xrandr -s 1600x1200[/code]

Despite the instruction on this page: [url=http://www.systemparadox.co.uk/XRandR]How to enable XRandR | The System Paradox[/url]
[code]Section "ServerFlags"
Option "RandR" "on"
EndSection[/code]
Omitting the RandR option in the xorg.conf file, doesn't change anything to regarding its behaviour. Even without this option RandR will still work.

And even [b]without[/b] the nv driver, or any other reference to whatsoever driver at all, in xorg.conf:
[code]Section "Device"
..
..
Driver "nv"
EndSection[/code]
xrandr will still work.

The question is what exactly do you expect from xrandr?

Me too, I am experiencing problems with a dual-screen setup. Currently the graphic card uses the wrong output for the default screen. I suspect a hardware failure regarding wrong EDID data.

Sorry for my (very) late reply and thanks for yours. I thought I would not receive any answer and had few time to come back to the forum until now.

Well I'd like to use dual screen. I think my board has no hw problem because I succeeded with the proprietary drivers in the past.

I think the main problem is that the randr command to show the available devices only shows me one output ("default") when I list them, even when I am in "clone" mode (the only mode I can get to work) and obviously there are two outputs (which could be, according to some tutorials, something like "VGA0" and "DVI0").

That's why I began to wonder if only randr was supported on my system. If not, why bother?

Also please note that the fact that it is supported for your board does not imply that it is for mine. E.g., I know for (almost) sure that randr is supported for GeForce 8xxx series.