Re: Re (2): configuring xserver [Solved]
On 2009-09-25_10:07:22, peasthope@shaw.ca wrote:
> Paul,
>
> > Thanks. gtf gave me a plausible modeline. I editted it into xorg.conf
> > as suggested and it worked.
>
> If you can spare a few minutes, please post a detail or two.
> It might solve a remotely similar problem here.
>
> [In-reply-to: might work with the Message-id: enclosed in < >.
> We'll see.]
>
> Thanks, ... Peter E.
I want to be helpful, but I'm not sure how. Many people reading this
know a lot more about X11 than I do, and some will jump on what I say
because whatever I say is obviously wrong at some level of detail or
another. But here's an attempt ---
Here is the video sections of xorg.conf on my machine as I originally
found it:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
EndSection
That's all. Notice there is nothing about what brand of monitor or
about horizontal or vertical sweep frequency ranges. Or anything else
that really distinguishes one monitor or video card from another.
According to some discussions that I found on the web, the screen
section is supposed to link a video device to a monitor by having
references to both a monitor and a video device in a single screen
section. But there is no mention of the video section that is to be
used for this screen section. Yes, I know. It's all handled
automatically now. But it is puzzling when you haven't looked at
xorg.conf ever before, and can't remember the name which was used to
designate the configuration file from the last time you read about X.
I followed the suggestion of using gtf.
$ gtf 1366 768 60 <return> gives:
# 1368x768 @ 60.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 47.70 kHz; pclk: 85.86 MHz
Modeline "1368x768_60.00" 85.86 1368 1440 1584 1800 768 769 772 795 -HSync +Vsync
The first line is obviously a comment. The second looks like it might
be input to a computer program that parses the line and plants data at
important places in RAM. The instructions from Tom are to put this
output into the monitor section, so now my monitor section is:
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
# 1368x768 @ 60.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 47.70 kHz; pclk: 85.86 MHz
Modeline "1368x768_60.00" 85.86 1368 1440 1584 1800 768 769 772 795 -HSync +Vsync
EndSection
This section violates the specifications that I found on the web for a
proper monitor section, but push-on. Maybe the specification is old
and applies to an earlier version of X.
To get this new xorg.conf to be used, I rebooted. At first there was
no visible difference in the display. I went to Gnome Preferences
Screen Resolution and found a new line in the resolution offerings! In
addition to 1024x768 there was now 1280x768. I selected this now
offering. Clicked on 'Apply'. There was some flashing of the screen
and after a few seconds it repainted with much better shaped
lettering. Some careful checking of html screens that are known to
contain renditions of circles revealed that the new setting still
rendered a circle as an ellipse, but with hardly noticeable
eccentricity. So, good enough for me, especially after reading on the
web all the crys for help from other tortured souls.
I ran xrandr, which displays information about what configurations of
X are possible for the hardware on the computer on which it is run. It
confirmed that 1280x768 was OK, which means to me that the programmer
who wrote xrandr understands X far better than I do ;-0. (This also
applies to the programmer who wrote gtf.)
This is pretty much how it happened. I read a lot of HowTos that were
not useful. Many were hopelessly out of date. (X under Potatoe?) Here
and there I found references to hal. I have not pieced together a
coherent idea of what hal is supposed to do. There ought to be a way
to automate the configuring to video hardware, but it must be very
hard to do, else it would have been done long ago. CRT monitors have
very different internal circuitry from LCD monitors, but there appears
to be no reliable way for the software to determine whether the monitor
is CRT or LCD, and no way to put a user specified flag into xorg.conf
without breaking someone's software.
The monitor that I installed and succeeded in configuring well enough,
was a trial run for me. It was my first flat panel display. It was
painful. But not so painful as to lead me to persist in using CRTs
for the rest of my life. And I think it will get better as xorg
developers continue to tinker with the code in ways that I have no
way to understand.
HTH
--
Paul E Condon
pecondon@mesanetworks.net
Reply to: