Graphics Resolution- Upgrade /Blank Screen after reboot

[Kirk_Lowery]

<face-slap>
Of course. I knew that. I did.

Thanks!

[MAFoElffen]

Lol...

[Kirk_Lowery]

I thought I'd give an update:

I used the live 15.10 cd to check on any display issues. There weren't any. So I went ahead and upgraded. The entire upgrade went flawlessly (well, I had to reinstall LibreOffice and RStudio; don't know why that happened), and no display issues.

Thanks for holding my hand through this!

[sudodus]

You are welcome Kirk_Lowery

[Nunya_Business]

Hi all.

I'm not sure if this is where I should be asking for help with the issue I have, but much of the information I have read in this thread is related to what I am wanting to accomplish, so if I am in the wrong place, please let me know.

I've spent literally weeks trying to solve a graphics resolution problem in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with no real success. I would like to find a way to allow the Unity DE to use the standard KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) video resolutions and controls, but have the Virtual Terminal (Ctrl + Alt + F1-6) and boot up and shutdown resolutions use standard VGA 640x480. I've tried everything I can think of and read hundreds of posts, none of which were able to help me find what I want.

The only way I have been able to get any resolution in the Virtual Terminal other than my monitors "Preferred Resolution" of 1920x1080, is to use the kernel boot flag "nomodeset". That allows the boot resolution and Virtual Terminal resolution to be set through the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT variable and / or the GRUB_GFXMODE and GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX variables, but using "nomodeset" also prevents the use of any resolutions other than 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, or 1280x1024 in the Unity Desktop Environment and xrandr is so limited as to be almost useless - which is a less than ideal solution. Booting without the "nomodeset" flag *ALWAYS* causes the kernel to switch the resolution to 1920x1080 a few seconds into the boot process.

To keep this post reasonably short(?), I won't detail all of the things I have tried so far, but please understand that I have tried almost everything I have seen posted so far. I've created /etc/X11/xorg.conf files, I've tried changing console fonts, I've tried every mode listed by the grub command 'vbeinfo' in an assortment of variations (vga=0x112, video=HDMI-1:640x480-8@60, GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480, etc.). I even tried to edit the /etc/grub.d/00_header file.

I realize that many of the methods that I've mentioned have been depricated, and prehaps there really is not any way to get what I want, but I haven't given up yet. I keep thinking that it must just be something that I have done wrong. If anyone has any ideas, I would be happy to try almost anything at this point.

To give a little background, I would like to explain that the reason I am so determined to do this in this particular way, is that I have poor eyesight, and I often find it easier to work from a terminal than in the GUI. My hardware is an Intel C2D E8600 with 16GB DDR3 using an integrated Intel Q45 Express Chipset / X4500 GPU and I am running the vanilla 16.04 Xenial x64 desktop install in a nearly Out-Of-The-Box configuration.

[Nunya_Business]

So it turns out that shortly after I posted my question, I found my answer. I actually had been doing something wrong. Here are the relevant lines from my /etc/default/grub file that I needed with a few comments added to help me remember what lines do what:

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
GRUB_TIMEOUT=2
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash video=640x480-32@60"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480 # Sets initial boot resolution, including GRUB boot menu
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=640x480 # Sets intermediate stage resolution (keep also works)
# GRUB_TERMINAL=console    # Sets the GRUB boot menu to 640x480 ; Overrides GRUB_GFXMODE

No other changes to anything else were required other than running:

sudo update-grub

Followed by a reboot.

I would have sworn I tried this days ago, but at least it finally works. My thanks to the community for all of the various tips and help along the way.

[sudodus]

Congratulations to a working solution Nunya_Business, and thanks for sharing it

In order to get help in the future, please create a new thread with a good descriptive title, and describe your problem (similar to what you did in your two posts here) in the first post of your new thread. That way you are likely to get good help, that is specific for you, your computer and your problem.

-o-

You may also want to try the solution described in the following link (which works well also in new computers, that boot via systemd).

The default font can be too small to read (at least with old eyes), if you want to stay with a text interface and a high resolution screen. A typical example is the console of a server.

So it helps to be able to increase the font size. Kudos to gtree: How to change default font size in console mode

[Nunya_Business]

Thank you for sharing that sudodus! By setting the console fonts I'm able to use a single resolution and still have text that I can read. That makes everything just that much better!

[MAFoElffen]

Recreation of the Linux X Utility "mkauth"
Re: Resetting .Xauthority permissions file For Logging into X

Updated: 2023.01.16

After a number of years of referriing to the above inked post and repeating the same .Xautirty fix to users, I came up with a bash script to recreate the Linux X utiltiy "mkxauth".

This utility is missing in Ubuntu. The Linux Man page for mkxauth: http://linux.die.net/man/1/mkxauth

The original utility:
1. *** Creates an .Xauthority file. If one exists, it overwrites/replaces the original.
2. Merges/adds to the authorization Keys of other users to a user.

I think it might have been omitted from Ubuntu as the second is just an extension, but duplicate of the util auth. You can do that with auth. But not having mkxauth.

So here is a script to create, fix, replace a user's ~/.Xauthority file:

#!/bin/bash
## Mike Ferreira, <mafoelffen@ubuntu.com>, 2016.07.01
# Revised: 2023.01.16 
# Filename: mkxauth
# Syntax: mkauth [UserName]

## Instructions:
#  UserName argument is optional. If given, it changes act on the provided User.
#  If no argument given, acts on the currenlty logged in User.

UserName=$1 # If optional argument provided

if [ ! -z $UserName ]
then 
    echo -e "Different User Given"
    Path=/home/$UserName
    User=UserName
else 
    echo -e "No User Given. Proceeding for Current User."
    Path=$HOME
    User=$USER
fi

If [[ "$User" == "root" ]]
then
    echo -e "Cannot be run as root."
    exit 1
else
    if [[ ! -d "$PATH" ]]
    then 
        echo -e "Users path did not exist. Exiting."
        exit 1
    else 
        if [[ -f "$Path/.Xauthority" ]] 
        then
            rm $Path/.Xauthority # remove if old is there. It may be corrupted or have an old or incorrect authorization key.
        else
            echo "The Users XAuthority file did not exist."
        fi

        if [[ "$User" == "$USER" ]]
        then 
            touch /home/$USER/.Xauthority # create the file
            chmod 600  $Path/.Xauthority # set the permissions of the file
            chown $User:$User $Path/.Xauthority # set the ownership to the user
        else
            sudo touch /home/$USER/.Xauthority # create the file
            sudo chmod 600  $Path/.Xauthority # set the permissions of the file
            sudo chown $User:$User $Path/.Xauthority # set the ownership to the user'
        fi
        
        echo -e "New XAuthority file created for $User" # tell the user if successful
    fi
fi
exit 0

The util's syntax is

mkxauth <UserName>

If you are not an admin user, you can only fix your own. The UserName is optional. If not provided, it used the current logged in User. If provided it changes the user acted on to that UserName.

This script should probably be added as a utility script in a user ~/Scripts or in the ~/.local/bin directory. Add that directory and to path inside the ~/.profile file, if not already.

After file is written, set the file permissions so it can execute as a bash script

cd /Path/To/ScriptFile
chmod +x ./mkxauth

[HareBall]

I am past the blank screen. I deleted the quiet splash and managed to get it started loading only to have it freeze here [ 12.891791] wmi: Mapper loaded