First let me say that the nVidia dual monitor support under Fedora 8 has been a constant struggle. Every time I install a kernel update it brakes the display driver, xserver fails to start, and I lose half a day trying to get my dual monitor support back. But usually I can eventually do it.

Not this time. I upgrade to the kernel released today and all the usual tricks are not working. I re-copied what used to be a known working xorg.conf file back to the X11 dir (didn't do it), I reinstalled the nVidia driver (didn't work), I downloaded and installed the newest nVidia driver (didn't work).

I can turn on dual monitor, but when I do, one monitor goes white, the other black and stays that way until I pull the plug on the entire PC. Is anyone else struggling with this or can offer some advice?

Thanks!

There are a couple of easier(and safer) ways to handle nvidia in Fedora.

Livna offers nvidia kmods. The only problem with these is that they have to be updated every time you update the kernel. The second problem is that it sometimes takes firewing (the guy who does it) a couple of days to get them done(usually the same day).

Freshrpms also offers a solution. The have a dkms solution. Whenever you update the kernel and reboot it automatically rebuilds the driver against the new kernel. The only issue with this is that they have not updated the nvidia driver that it is based on in a long time(still carries a F7 name tag). It works very well and is my preferred solution.


When rpmfusion occurs (F9) they are supposed to be switching to a new format that is somewhere between the two above solutions (amod?).

I hope that is the case because just installing the nvidia drivers themselves has completely hosed my dual monitor setup. And the best part? nvidia won't support me because the card came in a Dell, and Dell won't support me because I am running Fedora8. I am thankful for forums.

I googled livna and found an rpm site but when I searched for nvidia I got zero results. Could you post a link to what you are talking about?

At freshrpms.net I am seeing some dkms packages for ndis and others but not for nvidia... Here is what they got:

dkms-gspca
dkms-ipw3945
dkms-kqemu
dkms-lirc
dkms-ndiswrapper
dkms-ntfs
dkms-tiacx

Could you comment on how you found the correct dkms package? Or perhaps even post a link? Thanks!

Everytime you update your kernel, you have to recompile your third party modules and drivers so that they work with the new kernel. If you don't want this hassle, then you need to use the nvidia driver from livna. You first need to setup the livna repo
After that search for a driver that works with your card
A list of all nvidia drivers will be shown. When you find the right nvidia driver, install it by doing something like

lazlow and reddaz: this was indeed the ticket. I went the livna route and it corrected my display problems. Thanks for the help. Several people in my office are considering dual booting in the near future so they can get more linux exposure. They have virtually identical hardware so I will document this in our wiki so they do not have to endure the same frustration as I did. Thanks again!

http://werewolf.freshrpms.net/rpm.html?id=251

This is the link to the 386 version of the freshrpms driver. It automatically rebuilds itself after a kernel upgrade. If you go this route the user does NOT have to do anything (after initial install). Which is why I prefer it over the Livna model.