Folks,

I wonder how I could install a second display (videocard/monitor)and
configure it so that the output of a given terminal (or program) is
output on that display.

For example,, that second monitor could be used to run top to monitor
the system load.

Any ideas on how to do this?

--
Fernando Gont (fgont@frh.utn.edu.ar)
Laboratorio de Informatica
Universidad Tecnologica Nacional, Facultad Regional Haedo
Tel: +54 11 4659 2575 Int 130

In article <414791A8.3050008@frh.utn.edu.ar>,
Fernando Gont <fgont@frh.utn.edu.ar> wrote:
>Folks,
>
>I wonder how I could install a second display (videocard/monitor)and
>configure it so that the output of a given terminal (or program) is
>output on that display.
>
>For example,, that second monitor could be used to run top to monitor
>the system load.
>
>Any ideas on how to do this?

Well ... X11 is easy to run "double-headed". The second
framebuffer (graphics card) is one part. On a Sun, the order is a
function of the order of the sBus cards as seen by the CPU. I don't
know how it is done on an Intel box.

Once you have the second framebuffer installed, look at the man
page for X (or X11). I'll quote a part of it here:


================================================== ====================
DISPLAY NAMES
From the user's prospective, every X server has a display
name of the form:

hostname:displaynumber.screennumber

This information is used by the application to determine how
it should connect to the server and which screen it should
use by default (on displays with multiple monitors):

hostname
The hostname specifies the name of the machine to
which the display is physically connected. If the
hostname is not given, the most efficient way of
communicating to a server on the same machine will
be used.

displaynumber
The phrase "display" is usually used to refer to
collection of monitors that share a common keyboard
and pointer (mouse, tablet, etc.). Most worksta-
tions tend to only have one keyboard, and therefore,
only one display. Larger, multi-user systems, how-
ever, frequently have several displays so that more
than one person can be doing graphics work at once.
To avoid confusion, each display on a machine is
assigned a display number (beginning at 0) when the
X server for that display is started. The display
number must always be given in a display name.

screennumber
Some displays share a single keyboard and pointer
among two or more monitors. Since each monitor has
its own set of windows, each screen is assigned a
screen number (beginning at 0) when the X server for
that display is started. If the screen number is


not given, screen 0 will be used.

On POSIX systems, the default display name is stored in your
DISPLAY environment variable. This variable is set automat-
ically by the xterm terminal emulator. However, when you
log into another machine on a network, you will need to set
DISPLAY by hand to point to your display. For example,

% setenv DISPLAY myws:0
$ DISPLAY=myws:0; export DISPLAY

Finally, most X programs accept a command line option of
-display displayname to temporarily override the contents of
DISPLAY. This is most commonly used to pop windows on
another person's screen or as part of a "remote shell" com-
mand to start an xterm pointing back to your display. For
example,

% xeyes -display joesws:0 -geometry 1000x1000+0+0
% rsh big xterm -display myws:0 -ls </dev/null &
================================================== ====================

So -- to bring up top in a window on a second screen, you would type:

"xterm -display systemname:1.0 -e top &"

and that should do it -- while returning you to the command line prompt
in the original window on the primary screen.

Good Luck,
DoN.
--
Email: <dnichols@d-and-d.com> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

On 2004-09-16, DoN. Nichols <dnichols@d-and-d.com> wrote:
> Well ... X11 is easy to run "double-headed". The second
> framebuffer (graphics card) is one part. On a Sun, the order is a
> function of the order of the sBus cards as seen by the CPU. I don't
> know how it is done on an Intel box.

XFree86 (and Xorg) can be told to assign a certain name to cards at
certain pci-addresses.


--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .