pseudo multi-seat with dual head

[Richard Morton]

On 2 April 2011 16:46, Yan Seiner <yan at seiner.com> wrote:
> Richard Morton wrote:
>>
>> ok, thanks for that. the issue, with using a single dual head display
>> rather than using multi-seat is that power management will turn on
>> both screens if one screen is in use. I would rather have only the
>> screens being used being switched on via powermanagement.
>>
>
> AFAIK there's no way to turn each screen on independently.  I have three
> heads; one running myth on a separate card and two running Xephyr on top of
> a singe X session.  I had to disable power management on all of them to make
> it work.
>

oh! so if you wiggle one of the mice all three screens turn on?

>> So, I guess I go back to asking how I setup multi-seat.. I have played
>> with it all day, looking at using kdm and multi-seat display manager
>> (mdm, it doesnt mention anything after ubuntu 8.04) and I cant get
>> either to work with 10.10 on my laptop (although I would of course be
>> looking to implement on 10.04LTS on the server.
>>
>
> mdm is a few scripts that do some fancy stuff to find the root window and to
> hook the right input devices to the right screen.  They don't work with the
> proprietary nvidia drivers.

oh

> I hacked mdm to work with nvidia; there's a
> page in their wiki on that.
>

phew! you got  me worried there; even so, this is quite a pa-larva
isnt it? I know multi-seat is still a little niche but I thought it
would be used quite a lot in education and training environments so I
thought there would be something out there... on some niche distro,
but I cant find anything! ;-)

> If you're good with shell scripts, you can hack the scripts to work with
> your distro.  I think there's one binary helper app.
>
>> (btw; the idea is to use a single remote and "it just work" for the users.
>>
>
> Single remote for both screens?  Or single remote for each screen?
>

sorry, yeah I should have been more clear; a single remote (a ps3 bd
remote) for each viewing location; and control it all through it;
volume, watching, music, pictures, etc. all through myth, controlling
video and if the system is left on the menu screen for a couple of
minutes the screen goes into standby / power management on that screen
only. the other screens that are in use would stay on!