Birthday present "out of range" SOLVED

[drum]

Hi Newbie helpers,
Just got an Asus VW192t lcd 19' widescreen monitor for my birthday, lucky me.
Bianca/gnome/nvidia/beryl works great on my old crt but is "out of range" on lcd.
I got the asus horizontal and vertical specs from website and changed them in xorg but still "out of range"
I don't want to screw up my great install of Bianca. What can Ido to get the new lcd to work?
thanks

[telic]

Try the nVidia utility at Bianca > System Tools > NVIDIA X Server Settings > X Server Display Configuration. It might currently be set to Auto, but a specific frequency can be selected. I find that it overrides the Xorg file.

Best not to tinker with other settings that aren't broke.

Oh, and Happy Birthday.


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[drum]

hi telic,
thanks for your fast reply. As you know I can't get Mint up on the new lcd so I can't go into
Bianca > System Tools > NVIDIA X Server Settings > X Server Display Configuration
I tried connecting up the old crt and going to that config gui and changing the res to the lcd's 1440x900 and then reconnecting back to the lcd but it was just the same "out of range".
All I can do with Mint and the new lcd is Ctl-alt-F5, login and go to my xorg.
Is there anything in there I can change without messing up my beryl settings.
I've tried various horiz and vert refresh rates including the ones for this lcd on the asus website with no luck.
Thanks

[telic]

One other thing to try is hard-coding the frequency with the resolution. In your xorg.conf file there'll be a "Screen" section that looks something like this...

Code: Select all

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Default Screen"
    Device         "NVIDIA"
    Monitor        "Default Monitor"
    DefaultDepth    24
...
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes      "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

You can try forcing the frequency to 60Hz for your 1440x900 LCD by changing the "Modes" line to look like this...

Code: Select all

Modes      "1440x900_60" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"

Note the "_60" appendage on "1440x900". If you still get "out of range" then add the "_60" to all of the other resolutions in the Modes line (e.g. "1280x1024_60"). Or try some other frequency value from the valid range for the LCD.

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[drum]

Thanks telic,
I did what you suggested -added (Modes "1440x900_60" ) to my xorg
and everything is back to normal. The new lcd is looking good with Mint/Beryl.
I've just got to get used to a slight "stretching" in the widescreen. I'll get used to it.
Everything is much sharper and brighter now.
I appreciate your time
Cheers

[telic]

The stretching might lessen with some other valid frequency, e.g. "1440x900_70".

Or maybe not. I'd look for display adjustment controls on the LCD.

Asus VW192T

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[Husse]

Some caution

Try the nVidia utility at Bianca > System Tools > NVIDIA X Server Settings > X Server Display Configuration.

You need sudo to make the changes, so that is unfortunately just an useless button
You have to do sudo /usr/bin/nvidia-settings to change
I think this is a bug, you should be asked for your password when you click the button in the menu

[telic]

You have to do sudo /usr/bin/nvidia-settings to change

Don't do that!!

I just took a close look at what the nvidia-settings program actually does. Rather than read the current xorg.conf file for update, the program just wants to write out a rather minimal template, which would mostly obliterate any existing configuration. Holy sabotage, Batman!

Be thankful that nvidia-settings doesn't have superuser privileges, so its attempted overwrites fail.

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[drum]

Well it 'aint broke really so I aint gonna fix it anymore
I can live with the very slight stretching and I love the brightness and sharpness of the new lcd compared to my old crt which I've given to my daughter. Next I'm going to put Mint on her computer and get rid of windows. It's slowed right down with viruses and popups and I'm tired of reinstalling windows for her.
Thanks to all. I'm sure I'll be back with more questions in the future. I'm learning all the time.
Regards

[Husse]

@telic
If you change resolution and choose "Save to X configuration file" it saves your new resolution and leaves the rest of xorg.conf unchanged. I just double checked in case I remembered wrong.
Maybe not all versions of nvidia settings behave gracefully?
Which version do you have? (or rather which driver - I have 1.0-9755)

[telic]

I have 1.0-9755 installed for my GeForce FX5200 AGP8X 128MB card.

In nvidia-settings, under "Save to X Configuration File", there's a "Show Preview" button. That preview shows the text of what gets written out as the new xorg.conf file. It's definitely not an updated copy of my existing xorg.conf file. For example, the new xorg.conf omits all the options that allow Beryl/Compiz to work properly.

To test this, I made a backup of xorg.conf, then did sudo nvidia-settings, and then "Save to X Configuration File". It wrote out that preview text, overwriting my xorg.conf file. My X server then still (mostly) worked, but I had no windows decorations under Compiz, because those settings had been omitted by nvidia-settings. Of course, all of my other custom settings in xorg.conf had been deleted too (e.g. keyboard tweaks). How rude.

This is insidious, as anyone not running Beryl/Compiz might not immediately notice anything different.

I restored my xorg.conf from the backup and all is well.

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[kbuzz]

Hello long time lurker, first time poster.

I just install LinuxMint 2.2 on my laptop (HP Pavilon zx5078cl) seems to work real well, so I thought I would try it on my desktop and play with a new distro.

However when I boot-up the disk my monitor goes black and then a out of range 1600 x 1200 then screen goes blank again. So for grins I tried the new fiesty fawn 7.04 and presto the same thing. Here is some Info of my box.

Registered Linux User #374712

Gateway P-4 250GHz
512 MB. ddr pc133 memory
Bios Essex2 Nimitz
2 80GB hard drives
hda win.xp
hdb Fedora Core 6
Hlds DVD-Ram/-R/-RW/CD-R 2x
ATPI DVD DC 16x8x5
ATPI DVD DL 16x8x16 LightScribe
1 External 80 GB (usb)hard drive(sda5)
Sound blaster Audigy
NVIDIA GeForce MX440 128 MB
20" Princeton LCD Monitor (1600x1200)
QuickCam Pro 4000

[telic]

Your Princeton LCD "out of range" situation would likely be cured with the same procedure that drum has followed here, except you'll add "1600x1200_60" to the Modes line in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.

I think what drum here did was boot with his CRT attached, to edit xorg.conf (perhaps in TTY mode, if X mode failed), and then reboot with his LCD to see if the config changes worked. You might have to do the same with your desktop PC. If you've already given your CRT to charity, then you could download and install a freeware add-on to Win XP which enables you to read/write files on the Linux partition, so that you could edit xorg.conf using Notepad or whatever.

BTW, is your "250GHz" P-4 a prototype from Area 51?

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[Husse]

@telic
OK I kicked out Beryl because it gave me too many problems.
It's probably fair to say that without Beryl or something like it you're safe with sudoing nvidia settings.
However this leaves us without a "tool" to make adjustments - you should really never have to manually adjust files like xorg.conf.
I don't have a solution right now (have you?) but I'll sleep on it. Maybe some app to adjust video settings should be included in future Mint (preferably from Cassandra)

[telic]

It's probably fair to say that without Beryl or something like it you're safe with sudoing nvidia settings.

The xorg.conf file isn't just for video settings. The X server also controls the operation of other devices that can need to be customized, such as the keyboard and mouse.

Just one "update" by nvidia-settings can wipe out those other peripheral settings.

Then users wonder if it's Mint/Linux that's buggy.

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[Husse]

@telic
I know - but it did not break my xorg.conf but it did break yours removing settings for Beryl
My xorg.conf looked exactly the same but for the change in resolution I made

[telic]

I just reinstalled Bianca, with nVidia's beta 100.14.03 display drivers. The nvidia-settings problem appears to have been fixed.

Beryl 0.2.0 also seems glitch-free on Bianca with this version of nVidia driver.

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