Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 11 Apr 2002 19:12:49 +0200 | From | Vojtech Pavlik <> | Subject | Re: linux as a minicomputer ? |
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On Thu, Apr 11, 2002 at 01:07:44PM -0400, Ed Sweetman wrote: > On Thu, 2002-04-11 at 12:49, Vojtech Pavlik wrote: > > On Thu, Apr 11, 2002 at 05:43:31PM +0100, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote: > > > * John P. Looney (john@antefacto.com) wrote: > > > > Sorry if this isn't the place for this question, but it's something that > > > > came up in general office talk today. > > > > > > > > Many many moons ago, the GGI project promised us the ability to buy a > > > > four-processor box, four PCI video cards, four USB mice & keyboards, and > > > > let four people use that machine at once, with benefits all around. > > > > > > <snip> > > > > > > > Are there any plans to bring this sort of functionality to Linux 2.6 ? As > > > > I remember, some of the problems were that the GGI code was never going to > > > > get into Linux proper, and enumeration of multiple keyboards and mice, but > > > > I would have thought that was there a need, these problems would have been > > > > fixed by now. > > > > > > I'm not sure, but I don't think any code is needed if you run X. Bung > > > four USB mice, four USB keyboards in and four video cards. Write a > > > separate X config for each one specifying which PCI card should be used > > > and which mouse/keyboard device should be used. Now start an X server > > > for each one. > > > > Doesn't work unfortunately. The separate Xservers stomp on each others > > toes in the process. It works if you use fbcon (thus no acceleration, no > > 3d), USB, and hack the X servers not to switch consoles, and take > > keyboard input from /dev/input/event devices. But that's still far from > > the desired state of things. > why would they step on eachother's toes? You tell each one to goto a > separate vc and give each a separate identifier :2 vt8 :3 vt9 etc. If > each one is using a separate video card, then they should all be able to > run accelerated (no dri) and be fine.
1) Only one VT can be active at a time. Even with multiple cards. Thus only one X server will be active at a time, others will show a blank screen.
2) If you hack out the VT switching out of X, then still each X server will disable all PCI resources for other video cards, because it believes it owns the system. This will freeze all other active X servers.
-- Vojtech Pavlik SuSE Labs - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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