Dual head, display driven by mga driver has "X" cursor and is unusable

[Chris Fisichella]

Quoting Felix Miata <mrmazda at earthlink.net>:


> Do note that ATI is supported by KMS drivers (as are Intel and NVidia),


Hi Felix, All,

I went out and bought a NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS. It can support one VGA  
display and one HDMI display. I have two HP displays each hooked up to  
the appropriate port. When I boot into Windows, the display control  
panel allows me to set each to 1600x1200 @ 60Hz.

I can't get it right on Debian. Here is what I tried
1. Run Xorg -configure by booting first into recovery mode.
    ..This command returned an error "Number of created screens does  
not match number of detected devices. Configuration failed. When I use  
this for /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/xorg.conf, Debian boots to two very nice  
backgrounds. But that is all I get. No window manager.
2. Boot without any xorg.conf file. Both screens show a checkered  
pattern. One screen has a nicely rendered login prompt, but I can't  
type anything.
3. Edit the conf file to try a lower resolution, 1280x1024. It was  
previously at 1600x1200. I just got a different checkered pattern.

I read the output from the Nouveau driver. It does not list NVIDIA NV98.

Is this the end of the road?

Any other advice? I don't know what else to try at this point. I can't  
even get to an xterm. Booting in recovery mode helps. I can at least  
get to a command line.

Thanks,
Chris