Nouveau, kms, geforce fx go5650: crashing xserver

Question

I have an nVidia Geforce fx go5650 in my Dell Latitude D800. I have two monitors, my internal LVDS-0 (1280x800) and external hooked up to the docking station DVI-D-0 (1680x800). I've enabled KMS at boot time in mkinitcpio.
First of all, at boot, both monitors are being enabled at their native resolution. I really only want one (because really I think this is the source of my problem.) LVDS-0 is fine, but DVI-D-0 is setup as a clone of LVDS-0, so only 1280x800 of it is being used.
Here is my xorg.conf:
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "lay0"
Screen "scr0"
Option "DontZap" "false"
Option "AIGLX" "false"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "dell"
Option "PreferredMode" "1680x1050_59.9"
Option "Enable" "true"
Option "Primary" "true"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "laptop"
Option "PreferredMode" "1280x800_60.1"
Option "Enable" "true"
Option "RightOf" "dell"
EndSection
#Section "Monitor"
# Identifier "extra"
# Option "Enable" "false"
# Option "RightOf" "false"
#EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "dev0"
Driver "nouveau"
Option "Monitor-DVI-D-0" "dell"
Option "Monitor-LVDS-0" "laptop"
# Option "Monitor-VGA-0" "extra"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "scr0"
Device "dev0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Virtual 2960 1050
EndSubSection
EndSection
I've tried various versions of this. But basically I want LVDS-0 off and DVI-D-0 on. My """Option "Enable" "false"""" line seems to be being ignored though. When I get to the GDM, both monitors are on (in the correct orientation). However when I log in, my panel is not being set up on my primary monitor as expected.
Also (and I can't find any rhyme or reason to this) sometimes I wind up in a situation where I can't log in, I basically get logged out immediately and put back at the gdm. I am also logged out when I play around with xrandr.
This command either has no effect, or crashes (?) xorg
$ xrandr --output LVDS-0 --off
This command crashes (?) xorg
$ xrandr --output DVI-D-0 --mode 1680x1050
If I do a really simple xorg.conf, like
Section "Device"
Identifier "dev0"
Driver "nouveau"
EndSection
with nothing else, when x starts, both monitors are at a lower-than-native resolution in a cloned setup.
Thanks!!! Very discouraged so far.

Answer 1

piezoelectric wrote:
Actually, I did try to discuss my issues on freenode to figure out what was worthy of a bug report. No one seemed too interested.
When I complained that my computer was running hot and the fans were going full speed, I was told that it was to be expected because there were certain power management features not yet complete. That's a deal breaker for me.
So if you suspected gnome for some troubles, why don't you just switch to a simple window manager to eliminate that problem entirely (only for the purpose of debugging/testing of course).
Then you should be able to set the resolution you want. And xrandr should not crash. Otherwise that's clearly a bug.
Finally, one guy has started some work on power management, read here if you want to help :
http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/EmilVelikov
You just need to be able to rebuild a kernel (with a debugging option), and install nvidia blob for that kernel.