Display, please help

[oldbiddie]

I don´t know what happened but I just came back to my computer, clicked to wake it and now the display is all disrupted.
I have a black margin on the left and all the windows are off centre. That means I cannot use the scroll bar and all that is supposed to be on the right of the screen. I rebooted but it is still the same.
Could anyone help please? I only run Mageia, nothing else

[oldbiddie]

I fiddled with the various display settings. It was on ´automatic´ and now on 1280x1024 24bb. It is all stretched. I can live with that but now everything has slid to the left and I have a small ( +-5mm) black margin on the right. What has happenend? does anyone have an idea or how to correct it?
TIA

[doktor5000]

Would be nice if you could post at least what graphics cars you have, maybe which driver is used currently
and the maximum resolution of your display.

[oldbiddie]

NVidia GeForce 6100 to Geforcce 360
NV44 (Geforce 6200LE

resolution was 1440x900

[doktor5000]

Where did you reconfigure the "various display settings"?

Easiest thing woul be to boot Mageia in failsafe mode, run drakx11 and
there you select the correct display size, but don't change the resolution.
Save, reboot, and you should be fine again.

[oldbiddie]

Thank you. I shall try when I have some courage.
I fiddled with the Mageia CC in the ´set up graphical server´.

I wonder why things suddenly changed though. I hadn´t touched anything. It was from coming back form the screen saver

[oldbiddie]

Funny thing is I have a feeling the display changes. Now I have a small margin on the left. Before it was on the right. Weird

[doktor5000]

I fiddled with the Mageia CC in the ´set up graphical server´.

Why did you fiddle and what did you change?

BTW drakx11 is the same as ´set up graphical server´ in MCC,
but it can also be run from a text-only environment

[oldbiddie]

I had to fiddle because I couldn´t use the computer with everything off to the right and a huge margin on the left!
As I wrote, I changed the resolution to 1280x1024 but everything is stretched. Better than not using the whole screen and not being able to use the scroll bar or anything on the right of the screen. What seemed to have happened is everything had slid towards the right. Now it is more or less in the middle but stretched.
If I go back to the ´normal´ settings, I get again this big margin on the left.

[doktor5000]

Have you done as i suggested? You can do this also without the failsafe mode
directly in Mageia Control Center:

Easiest thing woul be to boot Mageia in failsafe mode, run drakx11 and
there you select the correct display size, but don't change the resolution.
Save, reboot, and you should be fine again.

Maybe that description was not really exact, so here's it again:
In drakx11 you need to choose the correct monitor (regarding maximum resolution)
and let the resolution itself unchanged in the separate menu.

Also, could it be that you are maybe running something like KRandRtray?
Please also post which desktop environment you use, KDE/GOME or something else?

[oldbiddie]

I use KDE. Not running any special program.
Yes I did as you suggested, set the correct monitor and can only use the 1280x1024 resolution because the others shift everything to one side

[doktor5000]

Please attach your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and your /var/log/Xorg.0.log

[oldbiddie]

Hum...how do I get them ? told you, I am ignorant

[alf]

I've had the same problem a couple of weeks ago, it was caused by the frequency and was not a matter of resolution. So try playing around with frequency.

[jaywalker]

I hadn't used the attachment feature before so here is my description of what I have just done (see example Xorg.0.log attached!)

Click on the "Post Reply" button on this page. Below the text entry area you should see two tabbed information areas; one labelled "Options" and the other is "Upload Attachment". Click on this.

There should be two labelled entry boxes now visible. The top one is "Filename" and it has a "Choose" button. Click on this.

A file browsing window opens. The directory it lists depends on what you may have last used it for (it belongs to your browser). Navigate to the / folder where you will find both etc and var. Click first on the "var" directory. Now find and click to open a view of the "log" directory.

The file window can now be scrolled until you see the Xorg.0.log file. Click it to highlight it and click on the "Open" button to close the file browser window and return to this forum's edit page. The filename you have chose should now be in the "Filename" entry box so click on the "Add the file" button to upload.

Now you can go and get the xorg.conf file from /etc/X11/xorg.conf ... BUT, you cannot upload it. This forum apparently won't accept files with a .conf ending. Must be some paranoia in the security department.

What you can do is paste the contents of xorg.conf into the browser's post editing box (where I am typing now - if you see what I mean). So you need to open it in an editor of some sort to see the text. The simplest way might be to use your browser's File->Open menu (Opera, probably something very similar in Firefox, Chrome or some other lesser browser:-). You should perhaps create a new browser viewing tab first - you may not have to, but it can't hurt.

Navigate up to the / directory then down into etc and X11. We want /etc/X11/xorg.conf, so find it in the X11 directory and select/open it. It should just magically appear now in all its plain text glory. Click somewhere in the page and press the CTRL-A key combination (hold the control key down and tap briefly on the A key) to select All of the text (it should change colour) and then press CTRL-C (like CTRL-A but use the C key instead of A) to Copy the text.

Click back on the tab/window/view in which your browser is showing your post reply edit box, click in the bottom line of your reply text and click on the "Code" button which is among the buttons across the top of the post editing window. That will (should) cause two "tags" to appear where you placed the cursor. The first "tag" is open_square_bracket_c_o_d_e_closed_square_bracket. The second "tag" is open_square_bracket_/_c_o_d_e_closed_square_bracket. Put your cursor between these ( ...]HERE[... ) and press CTRL-V to paste the xorg.conf text at that point.

It will look something like this:

Code: Select all

# File generated by XFdrake (rev 262502)

# **********************************************************************
# Refer to the xorg.conf man page for details about the format of
# this file.
# **********************************************************************

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option "DontZap" "False" # disable <Ctrl><Alt><BS> (server abort)
    AllowMouseOpenFail # allows the server to start up even if the mouse does not work
    #DontZoom # disable <Ctrl><Alt><KP_+>/<KP_-> (resolution switching)
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load "v4l" # Video for Linux
EndSection

.....deleted text.....



[oldbiddie]

Thanks for the help! here they are



Section "ServerFlags"
Option "DontZap" "False" # disable <Ctrl><Alt><BS> (server abort)
#DontZoom # disable <Ctrl><Alt><KP_+>/<KP_-> (resolution switching)
AllowMouseOpenFail # allows the server to start up even if the mouse does not work
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "v4l" # Video for Linux
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "monitor1"
VendorName "Acer"
ModelName "Acer X192W"
HorizSync 31.0-80.0
VertRefresh 56.0-75.0
Option "PreferredMode" "1280x1024"

# Monitor preferred modeline (75.0 Hz vsync, 70.6 kHz hsync, ratio 16/10, 89 dpi)
ModeLine "1440x900" 136.75 1440 1536 1688 1936 900 903 909 942 +hsync -vsync

# TV fullscreen mode or DVD fullscreen output.
# 768x576 @ 79 Hz, 50 kHz hsync
ModeLine "768x576" 50.00 768 832 846 1000 576 590 595 630

# 768x576 @ 100 Hz, 61.6 kHz hsync
ModeLine "768x576" 63.07 768 800 960 1024 576 578 590 616
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "device1"
VendorName "nVidia Corporation"
BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce 6100 to GeForce 360"
Driver "nouveau"
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "screen1"
Device "device1"
Monitor "monitor1"
DefaultColorDepth 24

Subsection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "640x480" "480x360" "320x240"
EndSubsection

Subsection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "640x480" "480x360" "320x240"
EndSubsection

Subsection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "640x480" "480x360" "320x240"
EndSubsection

Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "640x480" "480x360" "320x240"
EndSubsection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "layout1"
Screen "screen1"
EndSection

[oldbiddie]

I've had the same problem a couple of weeks ago, it was caused by the frequency and was not a matter of resolution. So try playing around with frequency.

and where do I find the frequency conf tool,please?

[oldbiddie]

I fiddled with the frequency but it doesn´t seem to make any difference

[oldbiddie]

Well, I think it is solved. I installed some more non free packages available for my card driver. Rebooted: same problem. Went inot MCC: same problem then went into Configure your desktop ( which I had tried many times before), set things on ´automatic´ and this time everything is perfect...for the moment

Thank you for your help ,it is appreciated

[doktor5000]

Then the reason of this was that in KDE control center (aka systemsettings) it was not set to automatic, which is the default.

[oldbiddie]

I have the problem again.I left my computer alone for some hours and when I came back, I had the big left margin again and had to go back to the 1280x1024 which stretches things.
What is wrong?
Doktor5000, it was set to automatic before. If I set it again on automatic, everything slides to the right. And why, since I left it for a few hours, does it go wrong? Is it the screensaver? the whatever looks after the computer when it is not used? Obviously something is wrong when my computer is left to idle

[alf]

For me it worked when I fixed the frequency to 75hz. On "automatic" it allways fellt back to 60hz and I had the black borders or the screen wasn't centered.

[oldbiddie]

I have tried to change the frequency but it doesn´t change anything

[alf]

for persistance of the settings maybe You have to do the changes as root.

[oldbiddie]

I did after fixing the desktop I confirmed as root. Worked for a while