Laptop resolution issue.

Thu Nov 8 16:01:36 UTC 2012

| From: jim <cinetron-uEvt2TsIf2EsA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org>

| > Problem mirroring the display on another display with a different
| > resolution?  I don't have much experience with that kind of problem
| > and it seems that it gets tricky.
| 
| Yes this is the problem I am having. Projectors don't have the same
| resolution so mirroring displays is wonky unless both the laptop and
| projector have the same resolution. Strange thing is I used to get lots
| of compatible resolutions on my laptop now just the 1440x900

Usually there is some arcane keystroke to cycle between the external
video adapter, the internal screen, or both.

Can you live with just the external screen working?  Then that screens
resolution could be used without conflict.

Can you live with both displays working, but not mirrored?

| From: jim <cinetron-uEvt2TsIf2EsA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org>

| On Mon, 2012-11-05 at 07:42 -0500, Walter Dnes wrote:
| > On Sun, Nov 04, 2012 at 11:01:54PM -0500, jim wrote
| > > Wondering if anyone has any thoughts on a problem I am having with my
| > > laptop. For some reason I can only chose the native resolution of
| > > 1440x900. I am using the nvidia driver 304.60 . It used to be that in
| > > the Nvidia settings menu I could select a number of resolutions but now
| > > only the one?? I am attaching my current xorg.conf file below in case
| > > that is of any use. Thanks for any advice on this one.

Perhaps you can downgrade to an older proprietary driver.  Or even
experiment with Nouveau.

With proprietary drivers you get what you get.  My impression is that
bug reports / feature requests are not listened to (by nVidia or AMD).

| >   The first, and easiest (if it works) solution is to temporarily rename
| > /etc/X11/xorg.conf and /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d to something different, and
| > see if it works.  If not, rename them back.
| Thanks it appears from searching online that xorg.conf has been
| deprecated in Ubuntu 12.04. xorg.conf.d is now
| in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d and xorg.conf as far as the monitor goes
| is replaced with 10-monitor.conf . Here is more info on this here: 
| http://samuelmartin.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/enabling-resolutions-in-ubuntu-12-04-lubuntu-12-04/ I followed the instructions . As a test I added a modeline for 640 x480. Below is the file.  I still only have the option of 1440 x900 in the Nvidia Settings window.

The conf file has been deprecated for a long time.  And for good
reasons (it was complex and few users had any way of knowing what
shold be in there).

Unfortunately, some installations don't work automatically.  For
example, I have a KVM that doesn't pass information about the monitor
to X so X gets confused (to make a complex story simple).

On one machine, X got so confused that X could not run.

X will still use a config file if you have one.  For example, I've
built a config file to work around my KVM problem.  It is possible
that you could do the same.

The config file is still complex so you might need help building it.

- there is a way of invoking the X server that gets it to spit out the
  config file it synthesized.  That is a good starting point.  It
  requires you to be able to boot to console mode, without X running
  so you can start it up manually.  I don't even know how you do that
  with current distros (probably easy, but different from the old
  days with init levels).

- if you have an old system that worked, steal its xorg.conf or
  XFree86.conf

| >   A few other avenues to look at...
| > 1) What is the output of the "xrandr" command?
| 
| Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1440 x 900, maximum 8192 x 8192

I don't actually know what that means.

| VGA-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

Clearly your other monitor is not connected.  The output might be more
interesting if the other monitor were connected.

| LVDS-0 connected 1440x900+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 331mm x 207mm
|    1440x900       59.9*+

This shows that the monitor reports to X that there is only one
resolution that it knows about.

The reporting is via EDID or DDC.  If you look through /var/log/Xorg.0.log
you will see X's conversation with the (built-in) monitor.  The
conversation is different for each X server device driver (nouveau,
nvidia proprietary, radeon, amd proprietary, intel, whatever).

Looking at a system with nvidia proprietary driver, I see that its
reporting is very modest.  It doesn't even report synthesized
modelines -- all other drivers that I've looked at do.

| HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

This isn't connected either.

| > 2) Plow through the output of /var/log/Xorg.0.log and see if you can
| >    find any hints there.
| No can't see any hints except I know it is seeing the file
| 10-monitor.conf.
| Thanks for any help in trying to get to the bottom of this.
| Jim
| 
| 10-monitor.conf below:
| 
| Section "Monitor"
|   Identifier "Monitor0"
|    Modeline "640x480_60.00"  23.86  640 656 720 800  480 481 484 497 -HSync +Vsync
| EndSection
| Section "Screen"
|   Identifier "Screenb0"
|   Device "LVDS-0"
|   Monitor "Monitor0"
|   DefaultDepth 24
|   SubSection "Display"
|     Depth 24
|     Modes "640x480_60.00"
|   EndSubSection
| EndSection

The proprietary driver is what it is.  My impression is that it
doesn't follow all the conventions that other drivers do.

Does the Xorg.0.log file show any consideration of the setting in
10-monitor.conf?  For example, some hint of rejection?
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