How do I fix a monitor resolution problem?

[Joe Brouhard]

On Thu, 2004-01-01 at 12:56, Jonathan Hutchins wrote:
> Don't you love hardware autodetection?  It makes life so much easier...
> 

Only when things *WORK*

> A couple of things you can try:  Look to see if RedHat's hardware "wizard" - I 
> think it's "Anaconda" - made backups of the XF86Config file - /etc/X11/
> XF86Config.  Look for text-based configuration tools to re-write the file - I 
> don't remember what RH is calling theirs now, but look for binaries that 
> begin with "x" and have "cfg" or "config" in the name.
> 

I don't have RH9 on any of my boxes (i have the Fedora DVD here from a
book I purchased yesterday),  and I'm running Gentoo here.

By default, XFree86 comes with a configure utility:

XFree86 -configure

This will auto-detect your video card and monitor resolution and write a
XF86Config.new file in your home directory (do this as Root.. less
problems.  the XF86Config.new file will be in /root).

Test it using XFree86 -xf86config /path/to/XF86Config.new

If it works, CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE to kill the client, copy the
XF86Config.new file to /etc/X11/XF86Config (make backups of your
original!!!).  You then should be good to go.

> It sounds like there's a pretty serious hardware conflict in your system.  I 
> would check for a BIOS update, and run any BIOS hardware detection/
> configuration routines to see if that helps at all.  Check any settings there 
> to make sure they make sense for your hardware.

I generally don't trust RedHat's hardware detection unless I'm using a
minimalistic setup.  I've had major gripes with RedHat's kudzu setup
when it comes to some pieces of hardware (ATI Video Cards for one).  I
have no problems setting ANY of my hardware up in Gentoo, but when I do
it in RedHat... *groan*  Talk about a headache.

-- 
Joe Brouhard
Sr. Web Developer
Chief of Information Technology
Kansas City Open Source Consultants
jbrouhard at kcosc.com
http://www.kcosc.com