[CentOS] dual head on centos 5 and ancient Nvidia Quadro NVS280SD card

[m.roth at 5-cent.us]

Fred Smith wrote:
> I was just handed a 2nd monitor for my system at work, and using Centos 5
> (latest) can't make dual head work. a good bit of googling isn't being
> particularly helpful either.
>
> It's a HP workstation xw4100, with Nvidia Quadro NVS280SD graphics card.
> Enabling dual head in the "display" app simply configures X so that it
> (i.e., X) won't start. I haven't found the x log file in /var/log to be
> helpful, either. This is using the legacy 96.x.x driver from Nvidia.

Nope, that won't work.
>
> the NvidiaDetect app (from epel) says it should be using a newer driver
> than the 96.x.x (forgot which one, exactly) but when attempting to install
> it I get a msg that the card requires a 96.x.x driver.

Ignore that - that's the driver it needs.
<nsip>
> Clues would be appreciated. thanks in advance!

Someone (Karanbir?) sent me a link to the CentOS FAQ that responded to
that, but I can't seem to find it, and the "FAQ CentOS General Questions
returns a totally blank page (even in view page source). I found this on a
quick google:
<http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/Deployment_Guide-en-US/s1-xconfig-dualhead.html>

Your other options are kmod-nvidia, or the proprietary drivers - note that
in the latter case, every time you get an updated kernel, you need to
rebuild (which isn't a big deal). If you go this route, you'll find a new
menu item, Nvidia control panel. Enable twinview, and you'll be good.

        mark