Stuck on 640x480

[Aearenda]

Ok, I got my server turned on. The screen driver is set to 'vesa' because the native Intel driver didn't respond to these settings. The vesa driver is a generic driver, slower than the native driver - but for a server, it should not matter. However, changing it needs a GDM restart (sudo \etc\init.d\gdm restart) and this will knock you off your VNC session. You may wish to leave things as they are for the present! Here are the screen settings from xorg.conf:

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Intel Corporation Integrated Graphics Controller"
	Driver		"vesa" 
# "intel"
	BusID		"PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier	"DELL D825TM"
	Option		"DPMS"
	Option		"UseEDID" "False"
	Option		"NoDCC" "True"
	HorizSync	30.0 - 81.0
	VertRefresh	56 - 75
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier	"Default Screen"
	Device		"Intel Corporation Integrated Graphics Controller"
	Monitor		"DELL D825TM"
	DefaultDepth	24
	SubSection "Display"
		Modes		"1024x768" "800x600" "720x400" "720x350" "640x480"
	EndSubSection
EndSection

However, I was wrong about the Ubuntu version - it's 7.10, not 6.06. The other server there is 6.06, but it has no difficulty with the screen being absent using the 'nv' driver.

So there you are - I hope this helps!

[IainPurdie]

VNC port is already forwarded - I've been using it fine for the last few days since I left France.

Wow, I remember VESA drivers from the old days of the 486 and early Pentiums!

I'll have a go with the settings and see what happens. Fingers crossed!

Oh, when you say it will "kick me off" the VNC session, does this mean just for the current boot session? i.e. if the machine reboots will VNC work again? Or does this change the desktop session (pardon my terminology if I've got that wrong) to one that's not configured to work with VNC, and will therefore need configuring? And if *so* will it be on 5900/:0 or on 5901/:1?

I think that's all for now

[Aearenda]

It'll just log you off forcibly while GDM restarts with the new driver. The machine will not restart and will continue to provide other services while this is going on.

However, to me, this is more risky than installing SSH! If the GDM restart fails, you will have no way to recover remotely without SSH. Perhaps you could arrange a cron job to return the existing settings in 30 minutes, just in case.