[SWLUG] Screen resolution problems.

[Justin Mitchell]

On Sun, 2009-05-31 at 10:04 +0100, P.G. Richardson wrote:
> > I've been living happily with Mandriva 2008, Ubuntu 8.04, Windows XP for
> > about a year now.
> >
> > Decided to upgrade Ubuntu to 8.10, but it displayed my screen as 800x600
> > instead of 1024x768.
> >
> > Tried upgrading to 9.04 after burning the install DVD. Same there.
> >
> > Tried re-installing to 8.04 with the original install DVD. Same again!
> > Huh?
> >
> >
> >
> > Tried Upgrading Mandriva 2008 to 2009 - it borked.
> >
> >
> >
> > Tried installing Fedora 10 over my Ubuntu partition, and it too
> > displayed my screen as 800x600 instead of 1024x768.
> >
> >
> >
> > At least when I installed Windows 7 rc, it recognised that I have
> > 1024x768, even if it didn't recognise my ATI Rage 128+ video card.
> >
> >
> >
> > What is going on?
> >

i would take a wild guess that the newer Xorg version is using DDC/EDID
to ask your monitor what refresh rates it can handle, and as is often
the case, the answer it gets is nowhere near the truth.

What you really need to do is find where the log file is that Xorg wrote
when you started it up, as all is told in there.  on fedora that would
be /var/log/Xorg.0.log but i dont know for ubuntu.

if you paste that, it should reveal why it doesnt offer you the
resolution you want.  and if indeed it has detected it wrong, the answer
is usually to add an old fashioned ModeLine to your Xorg.conf that
corresponds to the settings you do want to use.