Low resolution login??

[ravl]

I have Kubuntu 8.04.1 for amd64 on a HP Pavillion dv6810. I installed the Nvidia drivers using envy-ng, and they work correctly once logged in to KDE. But the KDM login page is always in low resolution (640x480). The moment I log in, everything jumps to high resolution just as my mouse cursor theme is applied.

Could the drivers be just installed for the user, and not globally? I have gone through kdmrc and there are no options there relating to resolution.

Attached is my xorg.conf, maybe that can help fix this.

[SZorg]

Are you using two monitors? "Screen1" shows a resolution capability of ONLY 640x480@60hz. If you are not using two monitors you may try backing up your xorg.conf, removing (or commenting out) that section and trying again. You may also try changing that 640x480@60 to 1280x800@60 or whatever you normally use and then rebooting or restarting X.

[ravl]

I just tried that, both commenting out and deleting the sections that had a 640x480 resolution. Also, I changed them to a higher resolution and nothing worked.
What I did was:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

to return to the default configuration. I chose my monitor model in System Settings, and restarted.
Now everything was in low-res, both KDM and KDE. Then I edited the xorg.conf and replaced the two occurrences of 'vesa' by 'nvidia' and restarted X again.
This reproduced the original behavior, having KDM in low-res and KDE in high-res, so I think it's a driver issue rather than a misconfiguration.

[irlandes]

I am encountering the same problem in a W3115 emachines desktop, using 32 bit Kubuntu on the 64 bit machine. xorg.conf is really screwy on mine. Nothing like xorg.conf on Freespire 2.0.8, which is Kubuntu 7.04 based. And, nothing like yours, either. I will be watching this posting and will be passing on anything I learn. I have worked with xorg.conf for some years, this is really different.

I copied in xorg.conf from Freespire on the same machine, multiboot, and resolution was okay, but the mouse is dead.

[irlandes]

http://kubuntuway.net/forum/showthread.php?p=262

This linked thread gives us a major clue to this problem. Dexconf and debconf. I will let you read it for yourself because I don't yet understand it.

[irlandes]

There is a new utility to set resolution. xrandr

Type:

xrandr <enter>

on a terminal, and it is supposed to tell you the possible resolutions available.

Then, to change you type:

xrandr -s 1024X768 <enter>

http://www.linuxtutorialblog.com/pos...on-with-xrandr

Someone has said to set refresh rate at the same time:

xrandr -s 1024X768@75

if you want the refresh rate to be 75 Hz.

Will keep you posted.

[irlandes]

On mine, command xrandr shows only 4 very poor resolutions. I dug into /var/log/Xorg.0.log (using: sudo nano /var/log/Xorg.0.log <enter> and discovered the log showed problems reading the monitor DDC (apparently how a computer does plug and play) though Freespire does it okay.

It also showed sync range of 31.50-37.90 kHz and vrefresh range of 50.00-70.00 Hz. Another user showed his Xorg.conf for the same monitor as:

HorizSync 30.0 - 70.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 160.0

The log file then showed a large number of resolutions not usable because the hsync or vrefresh was out of range, meaning the wrong range the machine selected because it can't read the DDC correctly.

I checked an old Mandriva 2007 xorg.conf and it had the same wide rates shown above.

So, the problem FOR ME is failure to read the DDC when other distros will read it fine.

[irlandes]

Solved. It was the nvidia drivers on my machine.

I found and now can't find it again, a posting somewhere which said to go to SYSTEM ==> HARDWARE DRIVERS MANAGER and enable the nvidia driver. When I did, it kicked on the download system, downloaded and installed the latest nvidia driver, 169.12, but perhaps a patched version, I don't know how to get the other numbers. When I rebooted, it worked perfectly.

And, the problems all went away. EDID reads the DDC; it has all the options.

I can't say if it will work for you or not.

[ravl]

I tried your suggestion of using the hardware drivers manager, and it didn't work. The X server failed to start, so I used envyng again to install the envy drivers. That got me to my original behaviour, KDE works well, on high-resolution and widescreen settings. But KDM remains in 640x480 and not in widescreen mode.

Thanks for the info, irlandes

[irlandes]

The only two suggestions I could possibly make:

1. sudo nano /var/log/Xorg.0.log and read carefully through it to see if there is an explanation as to reasons for not enabling anything else. In my case, in each possible resolution it stated either the frequency of h or v was out of spec, thus could not run.

There was also a reference to reading the monitor i.d. information; ddc1 failed but ddc2 passed.

2. One could go directly to Nvidia and download a newer or older version; some have said the older versions work. I found it with nvidia download for Google. One runs a certain command ending with .sh, I think. Then reboot or restart and see what happens.

You should be able to do this from a terminal prompt if X completely breaks, well, maybe not the download, but the install. And, with any resolution, should be able to get the download, yes? Of course, I learned how to fix things from the prompt back in Mandriva 9.? days since that is what one had to do so it may be easier to say than to do.

Of course, I assume you have used xrandr at the command line to see what it is enabled to run. You might post that here, though it is pretty obvious.

Last resort, try to switch to vesa or ati depending upon your video card, which I am guessing is Nvidia.