Trouble with dual GPU / dual Monitor setup

[Acid74]

Hey dear girls n guys,

today I need a bit of help from your side...
After using MX as my daily driver on my laptop for 2 years now and really loving it, I set up a "new" used desktop machine to work with. Not that I don't like my laptop anymore but I figured I need a bit more monitor surface for my daily tasks now without having to switch workspaces everytime. So I decided to give that desktop 2 small passive cooled GPUs I had lying around and hook two old monitors to them (just VGA nothing fancy).
So far so good the one GPU with monitor works fine (even with nouveau driver - more on this in a second) but the other set stays cold dead.
Trying to install nvidia drivers via the tools brought an error message:

Code: Select all

Kandidat ist: nvidia-driver nvidia-driver 470.161.03-1 470.161.03-1
Installiert ist: nvidia-driver nvidia-driver (none) (none)


Treiber benötigt:nvidia-driver nvidia-driver 470.161.03-1
470.161.03-1 
2 FEHLER: Unbekanntes Argument: nvidia

Which translates to "unknown argument nvidia"...
So drivers didn't install correctly I think.

BTW short inxi for you:

Code: Select all

System:    Kernel: 5.10.0-20-amd64 [5.10.158-2] x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.1 
           parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.10.0-20-amd64 
           root=UUID=<filter> ro quiet splash 
           Desktop: Xfce 4.16.0 tk: Gtk 3.24.24 info: xfce4-panel, plank wm: xfwm 4.16.1 vt: 7 
           dm: LightDM 1.26.0 Distro: MX-21.2.1_x64 Wildflower September 18  2022 
           base: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) 
Machine:   Type: Desktop System: Wortmann_AG product: 1009641;2120128 v: AB350M;2120128 
           serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: Gigabyte model: AB350M-HD3-CF serial: <filter> UEFI: American Megatrends v: F23 
           date: 08/08/2018 
CPU:       Info: Quad Core model: AMD Ryzen 5 2400G with Radeon Vega Graphics bits: 64 
           type: MT MCP arch: Zen family: 17 (23) model-id: 11 (17) stepping: 0 microcode: 810100B 
           cache: L2: 2 MiB 
           flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm bogomips: 57493 
           Speed: 2292 MHz min/max: 1600/3600 MHz boost: enabled Core speeds (MHz): 1: 2292 
           2: 2293 3: 1564 4: 1617 5: 1631 6: 1636 7: 1530 8: 1531 
           Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: Not affected 
           Type: l1tf status: Not affected 
           Type: mds status: Not affected 
           Type: meltdown status: Not affected 
           Type: mmio_stale_data status: Not affected 
           Type: retbleed mitigation: untrained return thunk; SMT vulnerable 
           Type: spec_store_bypass 
           mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp 
           Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
           Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Retpolines, IBPB: conditional, STIBP: disabled, RSB 
           filling, PBRSB-eIBRS: Not affected 
           Type: srbds status: Not affected 
           Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:  Device-1: NVIDIA GK208B [GeForce GT 710] vendor: ASUSTeK driver: nouveau v: kernel 
           bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:128b class-ID: 0300 
           Device-2: NVIDIA GK208B [GeForce GT 730] vendor: ASUSTeK driver: nouveau v: kernel 
           bus-ID: 06:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:1287 class-ID: 0300 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 compositor: xfwm4 v: 4.16.1 driver: 
           loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa display-ID: :0.0 screens: 1 
           Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 508x285mm (20.0x11.2") 
           s-diag: 582mm (22.9") 
           Monitor-1: VGA-1 res: 1920x1080 hz: 60 dpi: 96 size: 510x290mm (20.1x11.4") 
           diag: 587mm (23.1") 
           OpenGL: renderer: NV106 v: 4.3 Mesa 20.3.5 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: NVIDIA GK208 HDMI/DP Audio vendor: ASUSTeK driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus-ID: 01:00.1 chip-ID: 10de:0e0f class-ID: 0403 
           Device-2: NVIDIA GK208 HDMI/DP Audio vendor: ASUSTeK driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus-ID: 06:00.1 chip-ID: 10de:0e0f class-ID: 0403 
           Device-3: AMD Family 17h/19h HD Audio vendor: Gigabyte driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus-ID: 07:00.6 chip-ID: 1022:15e3 class-ID: 0403 
           Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.10.0-20-amd64 running: yes 
           Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes 
Network:   Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet vendor: Gigabyte 
           driver: r8169 v: kernel port: e000 bus-ID: 04:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8168 class-ID: 0200 
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 119.24 GiB used: 24.57 GiB (20.6%) 
           SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required. 
           ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: Samsung model: MZNTY128HDHP-00000 size: 119.24 GiB 
           block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s type: SSD serial: <filter> 
           rev: 100Q scheme: GPT 
Partition: ID-1: / raw-size: 110.73 GiB size: 110.73 GiB (100.00%) used: 24.56 GiB (22.2%) 
           fs: btrfs dev: /dev/sda2 maj-min: 8:2 
           ID-2: /boot/efi raw-size: 512 MiB size: 511 MiB (99.80%) used: 568 KiB (0.1%) fs: vfat 
           dev: /dev/sda1 maj-min: 8:1 
Swap:      Kernel: swappiness: 15 (default 60) cache-pressure: 100 (default) 
           ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 8 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2 dev: /dev/sda4 
           maj-min: 8:4 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 32.5 C mobo: N/A 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
           GPU: device: nouveau temp: 52.0 C mV: 912.00 device: nouveau temp: 59.0 C mV: 912.00 
Repos:     Packages: note: see --pkg apt: 2375 lib: 1290 flatpak: 0 
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye main contrib non-free
           2: deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list 
           1: deb http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/mxlinux/packages/mx/repo/ bullseye main non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/signal-xenial.list 
           1: deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/signal-desktop-keyring.gpg] https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt xenial main
Info:      Processes: 296 Uptime: 41m wakeups: 1 Memory: 7.78 GiB used: 1.83 GiB (23.5%) 
           Init: SysVinit v: 2.96 runlevel: 5 default: 5 tool: systemctl Compilers: gcc: N/A 
           alt: 10 Client: shell wrapper v: 5.1.4-release inxi: 3.3.06 
Boot Mode: UEFI

xrandr brought

Code: Select all

$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 16384 x 16384
DVI-D-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VGA-1 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 510mm x 290mm
   1920x1080     60.00*+  59.93  
   1680x1050     59.95    59.88  
   1600x1024     60.17  
   1400x1050     74.76    70.00    59.98    59.98  
   1600x900      59.95    60.00    59.82  
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02  
   1440x900      59.89  
   1400x900      59.96    59.88  
   1280x960      60.00  
   1440x810      59.97  
   1368x768      59.88    59.85  
   1360x768      59.80    59.96  
   1280x800      59.97    59.81    59.91  
   1152x864      75.00    75.00    70.00    60.00  
   1280x720      60.00    59.99    59.86    60.00    59.74  
   1024x768      60.04    75.03    70.07    60.00  
   960x720       75.00    60.00  
   928x696       75.00    60.05  
   896x672       75.05    60.01  
   1024x576      59.95    59.96    59.90    59.82  
   960x600       59.93    60.00  
   832x624       74.55  
   960x540       59.96    59.99    59.63    59.82  
   800x600       75.00    70.00    65.00    60.00    72.19    75.00    60.32    56.25  
   840x525       74.96    69.88    60.01    59.88  
   864x486       59.92    59.57  
   800x512       60.17  
   700x525       74.76    70.06    59.98  
   800x450       59.95    59.82  
   640x512       75.02    60.02  
   720x450       59.89  
   700x450       59.96    59.88  
   640x480       60.00    75.00    72.81    75.00    59.94  
   720x405       59.51    58.99  
   720x400       70.08  
   684x384       59.88    59.85  
   680x384       59.80    59.96  
   640x400       59.88    59.98  
   576x432       75.00    75.00    70.00    60.06  
   640x360       59.86    59.83    59.84    59.32  
   512x384       75.03    70.07    60.00  
   512x288       60.00    59.92  
   416x312       74.66  
   480x270       59.63    59.82  
   400x300       72.19    75.12    60.32    56.34  
   432x243       59.92    59.57  
   320x240       72.81    75.00    60.05  
   360x202       59.51    59.13  
   320x180       59.84    59.32  

and xrandr --listproviders

Code: Select all

$ xrandr --listproviders
Providers: number : 2
Provider 0: id: 0x46 cap: 0xf, Source Output, Sink Output, Source Offload, Sink Offload crtcs: 4 outputs: 3 associated providers: 0 name:modesetting
Provider 1: id: 0xf8 cap: 0xf, Source Output, Sink Output, Source Offload, Sink Offload crtcs: 4 outputs: 3 associated providers: 0 name:modesetting

Reading through the manual and the topics in this forum brought no new enlightenment to me. I am far too inexperienced on setting up and troubleshooting graphics in GNU/Linux systems - so please consider me a noob on that

I've read that it is sometimes troublesome to get it set up correctly but the list of possible sources of trouble seems long just by searching for solutions... X11, X-configure, xfce, ... no idea where to start here without bricking something.

All help is very appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[Acid74]

UPDATE to the above mentioned problem:


I made some progress...

After tinkering around with xorg.conf, setting PCI lanes for both graphics cards manually, assigning monitors, screensettings... for short terms: it did not work out. It all got me so frustrated that I thought about abandoning the dual monitor setup :/
I removed one of the graphics cards from my PC (physically) and thought to myself that I'd have at least another try installing the driver for the ONE nvidia card that was left. And voila - install worked flawlessly this time. Even nvidia-settings did respond now that a driver was there.

Time to be brave: Took the PC apart one more time, threw the second card back in again. Loaded nvidia-settings and the second card got recognized as well (seems to work because the cards are not the same model but pretty similar and the driver fits both of them).

Tried to activate the second monitor and let the program write that to the config file. After a quick reboot - disappointment spread :( The only thing visible on the second screen was the mouse cursor. I could move the mouse there but other than that it was a black screen and I could not drag any window there...

One last thing to try: enable xinerama (which I didn't want to but tried anyway in desperation)
Reboot...

Surprise! Now both screens work!!! But everything gets spread out - xinerama works this way... Firefox fullscreen? Forget that... Gets spread over both of the screens. Most programs that start up get started in the middle (between the screens)... Login prompt... everything has to be draged first or can't work in fullscreen mode.

But at least it is progress... It is still not perfection and I ran out of ideas how to really fix this at this stage - to make the second screen a real second one right to the main one - but it is at least workable.

Still guys if you have any idea how to improve this to a real working solution, suggestions are very welcome.


Thanks in advance.