Screen resolution problems - another person who just can't figure it out

[Guest]

Hi all,

So, I just installed kubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) and I can't seem to get my screen resolution better than 800x600. I've got an ACER AL1715 LCD and an ATI Rage Fury Pro card (I think). Ideally, I'd like to have it at 1280x1024 (which it was on my super-old Mandrake). I guess I'll start with a more precise story, as well as some of the stuff I've tried.

Of course, the first thing I tried was the Monitor & Display GUI. The screen size slider doesn't go any higher than 800x600, so I tried messing around with the "Hardware" tab. The default (autodetected?) card setting "ATI Rage 128" seemed close, and some lists I found online seemed to indicate that it was correct, but I tried a few others just to see. Changing the monitor from "Plug and Play" to my own one didn't really do it. After trying a variety of combinations, every time I push the "Test" button I'm left with a strange white/black pattern on the screen and a big X for a mouse cursor. I'm not sure what is supposed to happen, but I usually escape from this screen with Ctrl+Alt+Backspace. So, no luck there.

Then I checked online... after looking around a bit, it seems I'm far from the first person to have trouble with this... but none of the solutions I've found online seem to work for me. Most of them involve messing around with my xorg.conf file, changing the order of listed resolutions or adding a line or two. But everybody else's xorg.conf file seems to be way more exciting than mine, which is an empty shell by comparison. I tried copying some of the stuff I found online into mine, but that didn't seem to do anything (I reverted it afterwards). My xorg.conf file:

# xorg.conf (X.Org X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type "man xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
# sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc104"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen"
EndSection

I also tried the command
> sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg
Which gave me a warning claiming to modify something, but didn't as far as I can tell.

>sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
Brought me into this cool text menu configuration tool, but this seemed only to ask questions about my keyboard before spitting me back out to the console.

So, that brings me here to ask for help as I'm not quite sure what to try next.

As a side note, every time I mess around with these settings I log out and start a console session. When finished I get back to kde to check my progress (and the internet) by issuing a "shutdown -r now" command. Probably there is a more clever way to do this, which I'd love to know. I found "sudo /etc/init.d/kdm stop(or start)" which I tried from a terminal within kde but this didn't work out so well - it just brought me to a screen where I could type but commands weren't interpreted, so I went to tty1 and did yet another shutdown.

Thanks for the help!

[octapusgrabbus]

Re: Screen resolution problems - another person who just can't figure it out

To try the following, you will have to know the configuration supported by your card and monitor. Booting into recovery mode and then running

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

helped me set up a Thinkpad T61p with nvidia to work in a KVM environment with an Acer flat panel.

I answered all questions taking the default, but listed the configurations I wanted and chose the vesa driver. Maybe you can take the native driver, but you'll only know by fiddling around.

[Guest]

Re: Screen resolution problems - another person who just can't figure it out

Thanks, but I've tried that command already... although not from recovery mode. I did give it a try again... Unfortunately, it did the same thing as it does when I run it from a console login - which is that it asks me 1 question about video stuff (specifically, do I want to use a kernel framebuffer device - I've discovered that if I answer 'yes' nothing works) and then 6 questions about my keyboard before finishing.

Does anybody know if this is the expected behavior for this command? I kind of hoped that it would ask questions about my video settings as well. Is there a piece of the command I'm missing? I used:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

As an aside, when I go to recovery mode I get a text menu... the "try to fix X server" doesn't fix the problem. It seems that neither of these things add any interesting content to my xorg.conf file.

?

Thanks

[ghillan]

Re: Screen resolution problems - another person who just can't figure it out

this xorg.conf seems a bit poor so i checked also my xorg.conf in a fresh hardy installation and with much surprise i had an exactly identical configuration. Im sure i had in past also other info ( like the "DisplaySize" and "mode", but honestly i dont remember exactly what to put in, but this should be the way you can force e screen resolution.

As a side note, every time I mess around with these settings I log out and start a console session. When finished I get back to kde to check my progress (and the internet) by issuing a "shutdown -r now" command. Probably there is a more clever way to do this, which I'd love to know.

tip 1 ) Logout and then there is a option "restart X server" or

tip 2 ) simply "ctrl+alt+backspace" ;-)

[toad]

Re: Screen resolution problems - another person who just can't figure it out

As a side note, every time I mess around with these settings I log out and start a console session. When finished I get back to kde to check my progress (and the internet) by issuing a "shutdown -r now" command. Probably there is a more clever way to do this, which I'd love to know. I found "sudo /etc/init.d/kdm stop(or start)" which I tried from a terminal within kde but this didn't work out so well - it just brought me to a screen where I could type but commands weren't interpreted, so I went to tty1 and did yet another shutdown.

No need to reboot - when in kde, either log out or go straight into another tty session by pressing CTRL+ALT+F1 (try also F2...6 - they are all command line / F7 and you are back in your kde, F8 into the second kde session, if another user were logged in, etc.). Now you can safely do

sudo /etc/init.d/kdm stop

Fiddle around with your xorg.conf and do

sudo /etc/init.d/kdm start

Another gem: Internet on the command line - install lynx (sudo apt-get install lynx)