nVidia Underscan/Overscan: Panning always returns (Mint 18.3)

[jaxankey]

Hi all,

I am running a fresh install of Linux Mint 18.3 on a Mac Mini 2010 (works great, WAY faster than osx, and now plays 1080p video without hiccups, something osx could never do, even prior to its suspicious slowdown). The mini has an nVidia 320m, and I'm outputting to a Panasonic Plasma (nominally 1080p). In order to hear the audio, I need to use the proprietary nVidia drivers v340.104 (latest from the repositories as of 2018).

Like most cheap TVs, my cheap TV requires ~50 px underscan to not clip my desktop around the edges (why would I get all the pixels I paid for?). If I open the nvidia-settings gui, I can easily set this up. I can then save the configuration to /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and the underscanned viewport will persist on restart. I confirmed that the settings in this file are loaded at login because if I change it and log out / log in, the viewport changes as expected. Importantly, when I click the "apply" button in the nvidia-settings gui, the mouse is constrained to the reduced viewport, as desired, and the screen does not pan when I ram the mouse into any of the screen edges.

The problem: after a reboot or log in, the viewport is correct, but now moving the mouse to the bottom or left of the screen pans it by the extra ~100 px buffer. It's ugly, confusing for the user, and I have wept / gnashed teeth.

Here is my xorg.conf file:

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# nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings
# nvidia-settings:  version 361.42  (buildd@lgw01-18)  Tue Apr  5 14:33:28 UTC 2016

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    Option         "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load           "dbe"
    Load           "extmod"
    Load           "type1"
    Load           "freetype"
    Load           "glx"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Panasonic-TV"
    HorizSync       15.0 - 68.0
    VertRefresh     23.0 - 61.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 320M"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "Stereo" "0"
    Option         "nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-1"
    Option         "metamodes" "nvidia-auto-select +0+0 {viewportout=1822x1024+49+27}"
    Option         "SLI" "Off"
    Option         "MultiGPU" "Off"
    Option         "BaseMosaic" "off"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

The gui seems to have some magic that is not properly saved to this file, and I have tried a lot to fix this, including the most promising setting

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Option "ConstrainCursor" "on"

or

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"On"

or

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"true"

or

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"True"

in either / both of the "Device" and "Screen" section(s).

Does anyone have a fix? I currently added the nvidia-settings gui to the startup, so I remember to change something, apply, then change it back, and apply again to achieve the desired result whenever I reboot. Hacky.

Thanks in advance!
Jack

[trytip]

you need to open gksu nvidia-settings and when you save X configuration you need select MERGE with existing file

[jaxankey]

Thank you for the reply!

There actually was no /etc/X11/xorg.conf file before I made this one, so nothing to merge to (I did a fresh mint install prior to attempting this). In a previous install, I had created xorg.conf with some recommended xserver initializing commands (forgotten) and then merging, but the outcome was identical.

Let me know if there are other things to try! I feel like nvidia-settings isn't exporting one of the key settings...

[trytip]

create a new folder /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ and in there a new file 52-nvidia.conf not sure if you have it and save your gksu nvidia-settings configuration to 52-nvidia.conf

[Mattyboy]

Screenshot from 2018-05-16 19-24-24.png

Use the underscan slider, apply and save to x config ( doesn't matter where )

[jaxankey]

Update:

This underscan bug still persists in nvidia-settings, but I have found that most reasonably modern TVs (even cheap ones like mine) do have an option to use the full resolution without clipping, meaning this can be a non-issue. You just have to dig through your TV's picture settings. Mine was hidden so well I could not find it until a few days ago, even though I attempted to systematically move through every setting on multiple occasions, and searched the web quite a bit!