Re: Re (2): configuring xserver [Solved]
Paul E Condon wrote:
> 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.
My understanding of this is no clearer than yours, just hands-on
trial-and-error experience. I understand that anything put under
/etc/X11/xorg is "old school" already, but still works for now...
I like the idea of xorg auto-configuration, but why the chosen setting
are not written to plain text in xorg.conf (or somewhere else) is beyond me.
>
> 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.
I supposed the right way would be to use some template in
/usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/, use a bit of xml magic and put this in
/etc/hal/fdi/policy/ . (or edit preferences.fdi there directly ?).
I tried this approach about a synaptics touchpad problem, and it didn't
work, xorg.conf option did...
>
> HTH
Tom
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