[Spice-devel] [Users] 2 virtual monitors for Fedora guest

[David Mansfield]

On 04/11/2014 10:35 AM, David Mansfield wrote:
>
> On 04/11/2014 04:16 AM, Christophe Fergeau wrote:
>> On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 05:24:21PM -0400, David Mansfield wrote:
>>> On 04/09/2014 07:15 AM, Itamar Heim wrote:
>>>> On 04/09/2014 01:57 PM, René Koch wrote:
>>>>> On 04/09/2014 11:24 AM, René Koch wrote:
>>>>>> Thanks a lot for testing.
>>>>>> Too bad that multiple monitors didn't work for you, too.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'll test RHEL next - maybe this works better then Fedora...
>>>>> I just tested CentOS 6.5 with Gnome desktop and 2 monitors aren't
>>>>> working, too.
>>>>> I can see 3 vdagent processes running in CentOS...
>>>> adding spice-devel
>>>>
>>> I have just gotten multiple monitors working.  I have F20 guest, F20
>>> host, F20 client.  To get the multiple monitors working I had to:
>>>
>>> 1) disable qxl.ko module in guest  by adding "nomodeset" to the
>>> kernel boot command line in grub. This one makes a huge difference -
>>> thinks are completely unstable with qxl.ko
>> This bit may not be necessary with the latest f20 kernel in the guest.
>>
> I'm running completely updated (kernel-3.13.9-200.fc20.x86_64) F20 
> host, F20 guest, F20 client (all the same physical machine) and when 
> qxl.ko is loaded and I open the second "monitor" (call it window-1) 
> with remote-viewer, a window appears with completely wacky contents 
> (see attached):
>
> It displays the entire framebuffer which consists of the contents of 
> "Virtual-0" and the contents of "Virtual-1" (which are currently at 
> different resolutions) scaled down and presented in the small window. 
> The contents are "in sync" (i.e.:  if I drag windows around in 
> Virtual-0 (in window-0), they move in window-1 as well.  Mouse input 
> is mapped differently than it displays in window-1: the left edge of 
> window-1 is mapped to the left edge of Virtual-1 (although it is 
> displaying the left edge of Virtual-0) . From a mouse input 
> perspective, the top edge and bottom edge are mapped correctly.
>
> If I do:
>
> xrandr --output Virtual-1 --mode 1024x768 --right-of Virtual-0
>
> It resizes the Virtual-1 portion of the desktop, but window-1 still 
> shows the entire desktop.
>
I have a bit more information regarding this issue of dual monitor 
issues with qxl.ko loaded:

1) When using gnome3 desktop, everything works fine. When using mate 
desktop the second window shows the bizarre "combined" desktop (entire 
framebuffer). Is it possible to trace the xrandr calls made by gnome3  
vs mate to see what is causing this?

2) When _NOT_ using qxl.ko ('nomodeset' on kernel command line), certain 
applications' performance inside spice is terrible - like abysmal. E.g. 
Firefox opening "slashdot.org" takes 10 seconds to display and the 
entire system is frozen during this time. But google chrome on the same 
web page is fine!  E.g #2, opening gnome-terminal and maximizing and 
doing 'ls /etc' (which fills the screen with text) and then scrolling by 
pressing enter takes 2 seconds - but doing the same in qterminal (which 
uses antialiased fonts) is perfectly fine.

These performance "problems" vanish if qxl.ko is loaded.

So I'm stuck with 2 monitors and strange performance issues, or one 
monitor and quite decent (still a bit behind nx/x2go but getting there!) 
performance.

I'm will to do any debugging to track down the xrandr issues if anyone 
can suggest next steps.

-- 
Thanks,
David Mansfield
Cobite, INC.