lost video

josephd · 04-20-2007, 11:21 AM

can anyone offer assistance, i decided to change my monitor to a flat panel , i am running mandrake linux and after booting up all was well until i decided to see what other resolutions would be like and completely lost the picture at a high res, now it just displays a splash message stating that the res is not supported, is their a way i can alter a config file or something useing a live distro.

GrapefruiTgirl · 04-20-2007, 12:09 PM

How exactly did you try out this other resolution? Did you change something? If so, that is what you need to change back.
If this happens when the system is starting the graphical environment, try pressing CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE to kill the X server, and if you get a display again, edit whatever you changed to cause the problem. Maybe the xorg.conf file is where the problem lies (/etc/X11/xorg.conf)

Emerson · 04-20-2007, 12:21 PM

xorg.conf is not user-writable. One has to be root to bork it.
Hitting CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE will kill X server, but it will be respawn by displaymanager. So you need to switch to a console CTRL-ALT-F2, log in, and find the display configuration file you altered using GUI. It's somewhere in ~/.kde/share...
Sorry, I'm not a KDE user so cannot help you further here.

Edit: You can try hitting CTRL-ALT-(minus) to switch thorough available resolutions, it works with X, not sure about KDE.

GrapefruiTgirl · 04-20-2007, 12:29 PM

It won't respawn if it's crashed X though.. When I first installed Slackware, the xorg.conf was by default such that my monitor turned off when X started. CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE got the monitor turned back on at least; probably F2 or similar would have done that too. I was new, so I was pretty stuck for a few days

But true, you DO need to be root as Emerson suggested, in order to do any editing required, unless the file you need to edit is in your own home folder.

Emerson · 04-20-2007, 12:35 PM

I did not suggest to be root. I meant OP couldn't mess with xorg.conf when (s)he was logged in as user, so it is intact.

Quote:

It won't respawn if it's crashed X though.

Pardon me?

josephd · 04-22-2007, 12:41 PM

thanks to grapefruit girl and emmerson for your helpful reply's, being a person quite new to Linux I decided to mess around and in the course of so doing screwed up the whole system, the only message on the screen was... analog...out of range...80.8khz / 65 hz, i guess my graphics card was not up to it.? I now have Suse enterprise desktop running fine.

J.W. · 04-22-2007, 04:47 PM

Your xorg.conf file (which contains your video settings) probably supports multiple resolutions. You can 'scroll' through them by pressing Ctl-Alt-"+" (that's the plus sign on the numeric keyboard) You may need to do that 3 or 4 times till it gets to a low enough resolution to be displayed. Note: if your xorg.conf only contains resolution setting(s) that are incompatible with your monitor, the above won't have any effect. Good luck with it either way