[Wolves] where do i start??

[Alan Pope]

On Fri, Jul 21, 2006 at 01:25:21PM +0100, Alan Pope wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 21, 2006 at 12:46:23PM +0100, David Morley wrote:
> > >I changed it from vga to a low resolution and colours and the install went
> > >fine, but when i start the machine without the cd the same happens. Can i
> > >edit anything to put ut back to a low res??
> > >
> > Boot into safemode by pressing esc on the grub screen and selecting it
> > then do sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf and change the line in `Section
> > "device" ` from what ever the driver is listed at to `vesa`
> > 
> 
> Safe/recovery mode on an installed ubuntu system will drop you to runlevel
> 1, which means you're logged in as root. So the sudo could be omitted in
> this example. Otherwise good advice.
> 
> It could be your monitor doesn't like the resolution/scanrate that it's
> being driven at, so doing the above might actually not fix it. You might
> need to look at the "Screen" section of the xorg.conf near the bottom and
> see what resolutions it has specified. If they are higher than the ones your
> screen will do then you could remove the duff ones.
> 

Apparently it's bad etiquette to reply to your own mail. Never quite
understood why. Anyhoo, another two tips for you.

When the screen goes blank after booting off the hard disk, it may actually
still be loading linux (check the hard disk light) but just can't drive the
screen. In which case you can wait for the ubuntu drums which sound at the
logon screen. Type in your username (yeah, I know that you won't be able to
see it) then press enter, then type your password then press enter. If all
goes well you should be able to hear the ubuntu startup music and should see
the disk go nuts again.

Anyway, once into the desktop (that you can't see) you can quickly switch
between screen resolutions with the CTRL+ALT and +, and CTRL+ALT and - key
combinations.

The other tip relates to the "modeline" in your xorg.conf. Try to find out
what the maximum resolution and scan rate is for your monitor and use the
"gtf" utility to generate a modeline for your xorg.conf.

Here's what i did to generate a modeline for 1024x768 at 60Hz.

alan at mother:/etc/X11$ gtf 1024 768 60
# 1024x768 @ 60.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 47.70 kHz; pclk: 64.11 MHz
Modeline "1024x768_60.00"  64.11  1024 1080 1184 1344  768 769 772 795 -HSync +Vsync

Which you can stuff into xorg.conf in the "Modes" section.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Al.