Project 4 - Video Wall!

Steps to set up a video wall, also refer to this documentation for more information!

  1. Install the same operating system on both machenes. Setup intstallation, setting names, passwords, ect.

The following line where done to both systems

  1. Update. * ' aptitude update '
  2. ' aptitude upgrade '
  3. Install video driver. We used; wget http://10.80.2.6/files/student/nvidia173.run (because we already had this on the lab server)
    • chmod 777 nvidia173.run ; to compile the driver
    • ./nvidia173.run ; to install the driver. We ran into some problems here. To get around them we used 'aptitude install build-essential' and aptitude install linux-sorce-2.6.31 to bring the system up to date.
    • Using the dpkg -l | grep nvidia we found all the nvidia files we needed too, and installed all files that showed up with aptitude install

The following line was done to vidwall and scp to vidwall2

' scp /etc/X11/xorg.conf 10.80.2.194 '

           
- Next we needed to install Fluxbox to have a window manager; ' **aptitude install fluxbox** ' on both systems
           * To set the screens to either act verticly or horizantly under the /etc/X11 directory we needed to edit the xorg.conf file on both systems. Under the "device" section we need to add   **Option "MetaModes"      "1280x1024 +0+0, 1802x1024 +0+0"** 
           * 
- Use **xhost +** to enable network communitcations on both machines.
- Use export** DISPLAY=10.80.2.194;0** to set the monitors of the second machine to display what is on the first machine.
- Installing Xdmx by using **aptitude install xdmx**, on both machenes. (Make sure both machenes are set to the same resolution)
- At this point we where able to launch the fluxbox desktop on both systems.
- Then we created a confiuration file that looked like this. 
              startx -- /usr/bin/X11/Xdmx:1 -display 10.80.2.199:0 -display 10.80.2.194:0 -ignorebadfontpaths + xinerana
        
- Patch Xdmx. We retrived the new patches from [[https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/+source/xorg-server/2:1.6.4-2ubuntu4.2]] (xorg-server_164.org.tar.gz and xorg-server_1.6.4-2ubuntu.4.2.diff)
- To patch files and output any errors to an error file, patch -p1 <xorg-server_1.6.4 2>err 
- All of those patched files should be in the /home/vidwall/xorg-server-1.6.4 directory
           * config, glx, debian, hw, doc, xkb (all of these should be in the zorg-server-1.6.4 directory)
- To compile these dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -us -uc
           * Remove old files by aptitude remove xdmx (should remove both xdmx and xdmx-tools
           * To install new, dpkg -i packagename

At this point we should have had a working system, but we did not. This is what else we tried.

NOTE: Because this did not satisfy me I rebuilt the systems using debian Lenny and this process. Once I got this done and tried to bring up the wall I keep having a problem with the mouse. I then googled the problem. The resolution to the problem ended up being to load Xdmx from debian etch. This worked and I was able to bring up the vidoe wall.