So I got a HP z2 mini g3 recently (to replace an existing dual monitor setup, which is relevant. The optiplex 780 usff and its core 2 duo E8400 is a real workhorse.), which has an intel xeon e3-1225 v6 (which could actually replace the pentium G4600 in my T130…1) and a mobile nvidia quadro m620.

The box has four display port ports in the back, along with a BIOS option to send the integrated graphics along one of the ports. One monitor worked fine. I only had a single display port adaptor2, so I had to wait until today to hook up the second monitor.

But I ran into this strange issue where only one display port would work at a time, integrated graphics disabled, and when I enabled the integrated graphics to try to run two monitors 1-1, X11 completely failed to start for reasons mere mortals like myself can’t begin to comprehend. Apparently the red flag should of been the tons of modprobe ‘key rejected’ or ‘drm’ errors and the like, and that systemctl status --failed complained about nvidia-persistenced and whatever the kernel module loader service is3.

There’s probably a downside to this I should care about but it seems like disabling secure boot does the trick and systemctl status --failed no longer shows anything.

I actually didn’t try this until I tried updating the BIOS, and one of the steps– which required loading a kernel module– failed due to the signing issue. I don’t understand security so I’m going w/ the wrong answer for now and just disabling all that stuff.

  1. especially while the disposition center has the z2 mini g3 ‘s for less than what you typically find just the e3-1225 v6 for… ↩

  2. my monitors are old. VGA always works; I guess DVI-D is alright. ↩

  3. I mean… the single display worked fine with all the errors? ↩