the nvidia-xconfig man page gives people incorrect information about the Option “AllowHMD” setting.
–allow-hmd=ALLOW-HMD, --no-allow-hmd
Enable or disable the “AllowHMD” X configuration option.
First, it places that into the Screen section. The how to’s i’m reading say place in the Device section. It works either way, so I don’t really care that much, but it would be nice to know which is the “correct” way <<< edit, ignore this. Both are “correct”.
Second, “ALLOW-HMD” does not work. It should read “yes”
It’s a small thing I know, but it has already started causing confusion. And with vr getting more popular, and quite accessible now on 'nix, it would just be nice to have that fixed.
There’s some other things that should be fixed as well. I’ve detailed them here…
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/comments/1d6w301/ubuntu_xubuntu_kubuntu_2404_nvidia_guide/
If this prediction doesn’t come true, then I’ll remove it.
None of these issues will be fixed by next year.
I just want this here, so that when I can prove I made the prediction.
Regarding the first part, yes, as you discovered, screen-specific options will work in either the Device or Screen section of the config.
For the ALLOW-HMD thing, that’s supposed to be a placeholder for the value you want there. The convention of underlined text indicating a placeholder comes from the xorg.conf man page. For example,
Option “DefaultServerLayout” “layout-id”
(sorry, underlining doesn’t work in the forum).
They’re not implying that you’re meant to put the literal string “layout-id” in there.
In this case, the reason this isn’t simply a boolean value like other options is that you can specify dpy names instead of just a boolean value. Please see AllowHMD in the README for more information.
I get that. The point I’m making, is that it’s a manual page. Which shouldn’t cause confusion. IE
the man page should read something more like this,
set the X configuration option “AllowHMD” to “yes”, or explicitly list the HMDs to allow (any other HMDs will continue to be ignored).
not this
Enable or disable the “AllowHMD” X configuration option.
I would say this option is too vague for a man page. It’s pretty much, this was added a few years ago, and hasn’t been updated since because not many people were using hmds… And now users are starting to look for and find this, and instead of getting an answer, like you should when you rtfm, you get something next to useless.
For real, the entire thing for allowhmd on that page you just posted, could be there on the man page.
And quite honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised to find a few other things that could be updated on the man page as well. I haven’t checked, because it’s not my job. But having clear documentation, especially for new users, ie, the ones most likely to check the man page, is important.
I’ve been using 'nix for 20 years. And mostly nvidia gpus too. I’m not the reason I’m suggesting this. I’m suggesting this, because I’ve seen users try this, and was like, why? Then they tell us. And i’m like, well…can we fix that? i dunno. I left my prediction above…
Side note. if something simple like this, isn’t even going to be looked into, well, it won’t surprise me one bit. It’s like, lack of comments when you’re coding. exactly…