I’ve be searching on how to do this for 20+ hours. I found all kinds of $400+ cards that required multiple $50 adapters. I found bleeding edge daisy-chaining displayport screens for $1000+… ugh.

Requirements:

1) Inexpensive

2) Not meant for gaming

3) One large desktop

4) Windows maximize to fullscreen for it’s monitor

5) Ubuntu 10.10 x64 because Unity sucks

Solution:

First, install the NVIDIA proprietary drivers (System -> Administration -> Additional Drivers). Next reboot and set the BIOS if needed: In my setup, the onboard video card (GeForce 7050) supports one screen either DVI or VGA. A dirt cheap GeForce 8400 PCIE card handles the other two. I configured the BIOS to boot to the IGP (7050) first because otherwise the 8400 would boot by itself and the 7050 was not even present in the NVIDIA tools (System -> Administration -> NVIDIA X Server Settings) . Now when I boot, the NVIDIA tools shows both GPUs. Close this tool because it’s not designed to work with triple monitor sadly . If the NVIDIA tool doesn’t work, try running this: sudo nvidia-xconfig. Logout, log back in, it should work now.

In the NVIDIA tool, you need to enable all monitors. You can just enable them with a separate X Screen for now with Xinerama checked. This won’t actually get what you want,  but it’ll allow the command below to work.

Editing the xorg anyone? Tried that, it wasted a lot of time. Now the holy grail:

sudo nvidia-xconfig --separate-x-screens --render-accel --xinerama

If you get errors, ensure that there are double dashes infront of the three command options. The output should look like this:

user@host:~$ sudo nvidia-xconfig --separate-x-screens --render-accel --xinerama

Using X configuration file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf".
Option "RenderAccel" "True" added to Screen "Screen0".
Option "RenderAccel" "True" added to Screen "Screen1".
Option "RenderAccel" "True" added to Screen "Screen2".
Option "RenderAccel" "True" added to Screen "Screen2 (2nd)".

WARNING: The Composite X extension does not currently interact well with the
         Xinerama option; the Composite X extension will be disabled.

Backed up file '/etc/X11/xorg.conf' as '/etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup'
New X configuration file written to '/etc/X11/xorg.conf'

This one command will configure your xorg.conf to automatically span across up to 4 monitors (tested)… perhaps more. It will automatically get the best resolution too. Run that command, logout and login again. You should be on all 3 (or 4) monitors now.

Troubleshooting:

If your screen constantly goes into a ‘no signal, power saving mode, signal’ cycle, clean install your system, or get it’s specs closer to mine:

NVIDIA Driver 260.19.06
 Kernel Linux 2.6.35-32-generic #67-Ubuntu SMP Mon Mar 5 19:39:49 UTC 2012 x86_64 GNU/Linux

You can get the kernel I’m using here.

If your screens are in the wrong order, take the easy way out and just move the cables. xorg.conf is a pain to modify.

If nvidia-xconfig doesn’t work, ensure all monitors are enabled in the NVIDIA graphics tool with separate X Screens. For some reason nvidia-xconfig requires this. Also this shows you weren’t reading because I mentioned it above

Here’s the xorg.conf if need it (click continue reading)

Continue reading →

my current project:

http://www.rs-tek.net/wiki

I built a VMware ESXi server a couple months ago for very little money with used parts. It’s been running for the last couple months, is fast enough for me and houses systems I use every day.The biggest caveat: It’s 32 bit only. If you need 64bit systems this won’t work for you.

Part list:

ebay (used equipment bids)
HDAMA motherboard including dual Opteron 2xx CPU, PSU $40 shipped
8GB DDR 2100 ECC RAM: $100 shipped

NCIX.com/newegg
500 GB SATA Hard disk: $50 on sale
Dynatron A43/A43G 70mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler: ~$35 for two shipped
Syba SD-SATA-150R 2 Channel SATA Controller Card (Part#: SD-SATA150R): $15

The last part was the really necessary part. ESXi is very difficult to install on anything but hardware RAID controllers which can be very expensive. According to the ESXi Whitebox HCL it supported a very inexpensive chipset, the Silicon Image Sil3512. The SD-SATA150R card I bought had a Sil3512 chip. There are probably many others on the market but this one works for sure.

The Dyantron heatsinks are very quiet and cool the CPU well. The HDAMA motherboard is not the best but it was used in some now defunct blade servers which makes them very cheap. I actually bought two shipped for $40 on ebay. The opteron 2xx CPUs are good.  For 64bit emulation, you need something in the 2xxx range of opteron but look at about $400-500 for one of those systems.

ESXi 4.0 installs without any problems, no tinkering required on this system and it hasn’t crashed in two months.

I recently tested this config for ESXi 5.0 and found the CPUs lack the SAHF/LAHF support required by ESXi 5.0. I’m not sure if this motherboard can take the appropriate CPUs.