Table of Contents
Project 3 - Video Wall!
Team members: Jamie Brant Kenny Denson
Objective: create a video wall using two pc and four monitors run in the following format:
| vidwall Screen 1 | vidwall2 Screen 1 |
| vidwall Screen 2 | Vidwall2 Screen 2 |
Steps to set up a video wall Requirements
Operating System: ubuntu
Installing the operating system
To install the operating system we followed the procedure Ken used to build his standalone linux boxProject 1 - Linux Install / Linux VM Server Install
After that we did the following line 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 :
- In the xorg.config file we needed to edit Nvidia to nvidia, and uncomment NoLogo and TwinView lines.
' 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” “1280×1024 +0+0, 1802×1024 +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.
We tried to download and install “dmxpict.patch” from the notes page of this wiki, under systems and networking.
o
in xorg-server-1.6.4/hw/dmx/dmxpict.c edit the file
o
between the line “FIX ME: Handle savng clip region ~” and “DMX_WRAP(Change Picture ~)”
o
XRectanle aRect;
o
aRect.x = 0; aRect.y = 0;
o
Arect.width = 9999 ;
o
ARect.height = 9999;
o
XRenderSetPictureClipRectangles(dmxScreen→beDisplay, pPictPriv→pict,0,0, &aRect,1);
When trying to fix the bad fonts issue we…
o
cd /usr/share/fonts/X11
o
cp fontname fixed.pcf.gz (we chose something that seemed like a 'normal' font name)
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.