Ubuntu 10.04 screen resolutions
marthter
marthter-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org
Mon May 31 14:17:29 UTC 2010
On 10-05-30 10:35 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> | From: Fabio FZero<fabio.fzero-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>
>
> | 1. It's 2010. It's high time we're past that kind of issue.
> | 2. The videocard is a common, run-of-the-mill, standard, old Intel GMA 950.
> | 3. The previous Ubuntu versions worked perfectly (for shame!).
> |
> | So guess which distro worked fine out of the box?
> |
> | Debian testing.
>
> Without spending *any* time investigating, I assume that the problem
> is due to Kernel Mode Setting.
>
> KMS is the future, but the transition has been shaky.
>
> As I understand it, x86_Free and xorg used to do a horrible hack to
> set the mode of the video hardware. It had an 8086 emulator, running
> in user-space, interpreting the video BIOS of the display.
>
> With KMS, real kernel code does the mode setting of video hardware.
>
> You can often fix this problem with a "nokms" kernel parameter. I
> have heard that nokms support may be on the way out.
>
> Using the VGA driver would probably work (but not efficiently). It,
> by definition, cannot use KMS.
>
> Using an explicit xorg.conf might allow you to specify the required
> settings.
>
> On top of KMS issues, about a release cycle or so ago (6 or 12 months) the
> Intel folks made some serious changes to the memory allocation
> mechanism in the driver and destabilized the driver. Unfortunate
> since up until then the Intel driver was the only decent
> manufacturer-supplied current open-source driver.
>
> | By the way it has seriously improved since they fixed their release
> | schedule; you can't really complain that the packages are out of date
> | anymore (yes, even in stable).
>
> Nice to know
okay thanks for the replies folks. Nice to know I'm not the only one.
I kept my original question short because I wasn't sure if it was too
off-topic. Now I guess I'll go to the long version of my question in
case anyone can help with the specifics...
On the default 10.04 install, the xorg.conf is not just minimal, it just
isn't there at all. I guess that's normal nowadays. From Xorg.0.log it
appears to be using the open source driver:
...
(II) LoadModule: "nouveau"
...
The video card is on-board:
martin at newton:~$ lspci -s 00:0d.0
00:0d.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation C61 [GeForce
6150SE nForce 430] (rev a2)
The monitor is (quite old) ViewSonic P815
vertical frequency range 50 - 160 Hz
horizontal frequency range 30 - 115 kHz
Its user guide is a little vague on its true maximum resolution... if it
is to comply with FCC class B it says its max is 1600x1200. To comply
with TCO '95 it says 1800x1440 @ 75 Hz. I have been using it at
1920x1440 @ 60 Hz for years with no problems and occasionally tried
2048x1536 which worked too.
The ones shown in the System... Preferences... Monitors GUI are almost a
match for the "Factory Preset Timings" in the User Guide:
GUI:
1600x1200 85 and 75 Hz
1280x1024 85 and 75 Hz
1152x864 75 Hz (strangely, the manual says 1152x870)
1024x768 75 and 60 Hz (manual has only 75 Hz)
640x480 75 and 60 Hz
Another strange wrinkle, these are ALMOST the same as xrandr's output,
but xrandr has one extra 75.1 Hz entry beside 1024x768:
martin at newton:~$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 4096 x 4096
VGA-1 connected 1600x1200+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
380mm x 285mm
1600x1200 85.0* 75.0
1280x1024 85.0 75.0
1152x864 75.0
1024x768 75.1 75.0 60.0
640x480 75.0 60.0
I can almost get what I want with the nouveau driver using gtf or cvt to
generate a mode line and xrandr --newmode, xrandr --addmode, and xrandr
--output:
martin at newton:~$ gtf 1920 1440 60
# 1920x1440 @ 60.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 89.40 kHz; pclk: 234.59 MHz
Modeline "1920x1440_60.00" 234.59 1920 2064 2272 2624 1440 1441
1444 1490 -HSync +Vsync
Note this 60 Hz is within the vertical range of 50-160, and the 89.4 kHz
is within the horizonal range of 30-115 kHz. The monitor User Guide
also cites a "Video In - Bandwidth - 250.0 MHz (typical)" although I've
never seen reference to that in any of the other modeline tweakings that
I've done over the years. The 234.59 MHz total pixel clock that it will
attempt to drive it at is under this 250 "bandwidth" for the monitor,
and under the 350 MHz pixel clock stated for the video card according to
Xorg.0.log:
(--) May 30 17:43:20 NVIDIA(0): Connected display device(s) on GeForce
6150SE nForce 430 at
(--) May 30 17:43:20 NVIDIA(0): PCI:0:13:0:
(--) May 30 17:43:20 NVIDIA(0): ViewSonic (CRT-0)
(--) May 30 17:43:20 NVIDIA(0): ViewSonic (CRT-0): 350.0 MHz maximum
pixel clock
martin at newton:~$ xrandr --newmode 1920x1440 234.59 1920 2064 2272 2624
1440 1441 1444 1490 -HSync +Vsync
martin at newton:~$ xrandr --addmode VGA-1 1920x1440
martin at newton:~$ xrandr --output VGA-1 --mode 1920x1440
As far as I've been able to tell (seen in official Ubuntu wiki), this is
"the right way" to do this nowadays, including to have it take effect
right from the login screen, putting the above three xrandr commands in
/etc/gdm/Init/Default.
Unfortunately any HD media is very jerky with this driver so although
this gets the resolution right, it is not workable.
The other half of my attempts were with the proprietary driver, enabled
with System... Administration... Hardware Drivers... I clicked on
"NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (version current) [recommended]" and
clicked "Activate", and rebooted.
The xorg.conf after switching to the proprietary driver is now
initialized to a fairly minimal (no changes by me):
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
DefaultDepth 24
EndSection
Section "Module"
Load "glx"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Default Device"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "NoLogo" "True"
EndSection
After doing this, the Monitors GUI (which just links to Nvidia X Server
Settings GUI) now has many more resolutions and refresh rates:
1920x1200 60 Hz
1920x1080 60 Hz
1856x1392 60 Hz
1792x1344 60 Hz
1680x1050 85, 75, 70, 60 Hz
1600x1200 85, 75, 70, 65, 60 Hz
1600x1024 60 Hz
1440x900 60 Hz
1440x1050 85, 75, 70, 60 Hz
[... 29 more ranging down to 320x175 ]
But still no 1920x1440 or even the 1800x1440 cited in the monitor Users
Guide.
xrandr has yet a different set, which maxes out at 1600x1200 (seemingly
because the first line of output cites that as some sort of overall
maximum):
martin at newton:~$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 175, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 1600 x 1200
default connected 1600x1200+0+0 0mm x 0mm
1600x1200 50.0* 51.0 52.0 53.0 54.0
1600x1024 55.0
1440x900 56.0
1400x1050 57.0 58.0 59.0 60.0
1360x768 61.0 62.0
1280x1024 63.0 64.0 65.0
1280x960 66.0 67.0
1152x864 68.0 69.0 70.0 71.0 72.0 73.0
1024x768 74.0 75.0 76.0 77.0 78.0
960x720 79.0
960x600 80.0
960x540 81.0
928x696 82.0
896x672 83.0 84.0
840x525 85.0 86.0 87.0 88.0 89.0
832x624 90.0
800x600 91.0 92.0 93.0 94.0 95.0 96.0
97.0 98.0 99.0
800x512 100.0
720x450 101.0
720x400 102.0
680x384 103.0 104.0
640x512 105.0 106.0 107.0
640x480 108.0 109.0 110.0 111.0 112.0 113.0
114.0
640x400 115.0
640x350 116.0
576x432 117.0 118.0 119.0 120.0 121.0 122.0
512x384 123.0 124.0 125.0 126.0
416x312 127.0
400x300 128.0 129.0 130.0 131.0
360x200 132.0
320x240 133.0 134.0 135.0 136.0
320x200 137.0
320x175 138.0
(note the output device is now called "default" with the proprietary
driver instead of "VGA-1" as it was with the open source driver, so I
have changed that in the subsequent xrandr commands.)
Now I of course tried the gtf and xrandr --newmode, --addmode, and
--output commands again but they didn't work the same:
martin at newton:~$ gtf 1920 1440 60
# 1920x1440 @ 60.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 89.40 kHz; pclk: 234.59 MHz
Modeline "1920x1440_60.00" 234.59 1920 2064 2272 2624 1440 1441
1444 1490 -HSync +Vsync
martin at newton:~$ xrandr --newmode 1920x1440 234.59 1920 2064 2272 2624
1440 1441 1444 1490 -HSync +Vsync
martin at newton:~$ xrandr --addmode default 1920x1440
martin at newton:~$ xrandr --output default --mode 1920x1440
xrandr: screen cannot be larger than 1792x1344 (desired size 1920x1440)
Googling this error gave nothing but multiple-screen questions and
solutions only involving setting Viewports in xorg.conf which I don't
think is relevant to a single screen setup. However as I was repeating
this stuff one more time for the purposes of writing this e-mail, this
was slightly different than earlier in the day, when the maximum cited
was always 1600x1200. So I repeated the xrandr command alone, and then
the above --output command again, which gave a different error on the
second attempt:
martin at newton:~$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 175, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 1920 x 1440
default connected 1600x1200+0+0 0mm x 0mm
1600x1200 50.0* 51.0 52.0 53.0 54.0
1600x1024 55.0
1440x900 56.0
1400x1050 57.0 58.0 59.0 60.0
1360x768 61.0 62.0
1280x1024 63.0 64.0 65.0
1280x960 66.0 67.0
1152x864 68.0 69.0 70.0 71.0 72.0 73.0
1024x768 74.0 75.0 76.0 77.0 78.0
960x720 79.0
960x600 80.0
960x540 81.0
928x696 82.0
896x672 83.0 84.0
840x525 85.0 86.0 87.0 88.0 89.0
832x624 90.0
800x600 91.0 92.0 93.0 94.0 95.0 96.0
97.0 98.0 99.0
800x512 100.0
720x450 101.0
720x400 102.0
680x384 103.0 104.0
640x512 105.0 106.0 107.0
640x480 108.0 109.0 110.0 111.0 112.0 113.0
114.0
640x400 115.0
640x350 116.0
576x432 117.0 118.0 119.0 120.0 121.0 122.0
512x384 123.0 124.0 125.0 126.0
416x312 127.0
400x300 128.0 129.0 130.0 131.0
360x200 132.0
320x240 133.0 134.0 135.0 136.0
320x200 137.0
320x175 138.0
1792x1344 139.0
1920x1440 59.9
Somehow it also spontaneously added 1792x1344 although I had nothing to
do with that, and the 139 Hz refresh rate in that row seems outside the
specs.
martin at newton:~$ xrandr --output default --mode 1920x1440
xrandr: Configure crtc 0 failed
martin at newton:~$ xrandr --verbose --output default --mode 1920x1440
screen 0: 1920x1440 481x361 mm 101.26dpi
crtc 0: 1920x1440 59.9 +0+0 "default"
xrandr: Configure crtc 0 failed
crtc 0: disable
screen 0: revert
crtc 0: revert
I've been googling both these "screen cannot be larger" and "Configure
crtc 0 failed" errors all day and experimenting with the various
suggestions to no avail. Anyone out there actually know what this all
means and can get me over this problem?
Cheers.
Martin
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