Changing Default screen resolution

[col48]

This has moved on slightly.

It appears that something is setting the screen resolution back to the 'natural' size after all my efforts to set it otherwise on login.

This is not a show-stopper, but an irritation, the resolution of which should be educational - for me, at least!

1. My xorg.conf remains as in the previous post.

2. My ~/.profile now looks like this (the xxxx substitutes for the full path):

# ~/.profile: executed by the command interpreter for login shells.
# This file is not read by bash(1), if ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bash_login
# exists.
# see /usr/share/doc/bash/examples/startup-files for examples.
# the files are located in the bash-doc package.

# the default umask is set in /etc/profile; for setting the umask
# for ssh logins, install and configure the libpam-umask package.
#umask 022

# if running bash
if [ -n "$BASH_VERSION" ]; then
    # include .bashrc if it exists
    if [ -f "$HOME/.bashrc" ]; then
	. "$HOME/.bashrc"
    fi
fi

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

# added by hand 2016-11-15
/home/xxxx/screenres.sh

The script file (screenres.sh) looks like this - NB no #!/bin/bash line:

echo "screenres BEGIN" >> ~/z.txt
date >> ~/z.txt
echo "before xrandr" >> ~/z.txt
xrandr >> ~/z.txt
xrandr -s 1600x1000
echo "after xrandr" >> ~/z.txt
xrandr >> ~/z.txt
date >> ~/z.txt
echo "screenres END" >> ~/z.txt

and after a single reboot, /z.txt looks like this:

screenres BEGIN
Tue 15 Nov 14:41:22 GMT 2016
before xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1680 x 1050, maximum 4096 x 4096
VGA-0 connected primary 1680x1050+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 434mm x 270mm
   1680x1050     59.88*+
   1600x1200     60.00  
   1600x1000     60.01  
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02  
   1440x900      59.89  
   1280x960      60.00  
   1152x864      75.00  
   1152x720      59.97  
   1024x768      75.08    60.00  
   832x624       74.55  
   800x600       75.00    60.32  
   640x480       75.00    66.67    60.00  
   720x400       70.08  
DVI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
S-video disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
after xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1600 x 1000, maximum 4096 x 4096
VGA-0 connected primary 1600x1000+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 434mm x 270mm
   1680x1050     59.88 +
   1600x1200     60.00  
   1600x1000     60.01* 
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02  
   1440x900      59.89  
   1280x960      60.00  
   1152x864      75.00  
   1152x720      59.97  
   1024x768      75.08    60.00  
   832x624       74.55  
   800x600       75.00    60.32  
   640x480       75.00    66.67    60.00  
   720x400       70.08  
DVI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
S-video disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
Tue 15 Nov 14:41:23 GMT 2016
screenres END

The content of z.txt proves that the script ran and that xrandr did something.
But when the desktop shows up, it is back at 1680x1050.

So what can be changing it back?

If I run the shell manually it duly changes the display (or not if already as desired) as expected and writes to z.txt.

[col48]

No further progress on this.

So what is going on?

PS: where does the list of possible screen res come from? The file which can be seen in a running system appears to be written at boot time. I was wondering if I could force it to default differently.

[col48]

bump...

NOT solved.

[Yellow Pasque]

I'd suspect Unity desktop is doing something to change the resolution. You may want to try another desktop to see if it happens there.

PS: where does the list of possible screen res come from?

Usually read from the monitor's EDID.

[col48]

Thanks Temujin.
I have tweaked Unity, am using the Classic Gnome desktop (as I did with 12.04 with no issue)

The output from parse-edid is this:

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier "PLE2003WSV"
	ModelName "PLE2003WSV"
	VendorName "IVM"
	# Monitor Manufactured week 19 of 2008
	# EDID version 1.3
	# Analog Display
	DisplaySize 430 270
	Gamma 2.20
	Option "DPMS" "true"
	Horizsync 31-83
	VertRefresh 55-76
	# Maximum pixel clock is 170MHz
	#Not giving standard mode: 1152x720, 60Hz
	#Not giving standard mode: 1280x960, 60Hz
	#Not giving standard mode: 1280x1024, 60Hz
	#Not giving standard mode: 1440x900, 60Hz
	#Not giving standard mode: 1600x1000, 60Hz
	#Not giving standard mode: 1600x1200, 60Hz
	#Not giving standard mode: 1680x1050, 60Hz
	Modeline 	"Mode 0" 119.00 1680 1728 1760 1840 1050 1053 1059 1080 +hsync -vsync 
EndSection

Could the lack of 1600 and 1000 in the Modeline have something to do with the reluctance to use 1600x1000 unless I force it manually?
Is this a useful avenue to explore?

I prefer not to try another desktop - at least I have a workaround for this one, and I am used to it.....

[davethescientist]

I've been dealing with this myself col48, and I appreciate that you've documented your progress. It's helped me quite a lot. Have you seen this page on methods to set the resolution? It says that the .xprofile (and I assume .profile) are run relatively late in the process, which is why the login screen isn't affected. It also details alternatives, such as setting up a xorg.conf (a more detailed example than the one you were previously given), as well as adding the xrandr command to the kdm/gdm startup scripts.

[col48]

Thanks Dave

Yes, I read the page you cite, and the earlier posts document what I did as a result. I do not know where the kdm/gdm script(s) might be. Neither /etc/gdm nor /etc/kde4 are present on my machine, so I have not followed up that one. And surely anything launched in the startup applications list must execute after anything more boot/system side? Whatever is pushing the undesired resolution is doing it after that.

As I said before, this is outside my comfort zone - I only have a hazy idea of how these things mesh together, and I know that a little knowledge can lead to disaster!