Display Trouble
 

I'm having trouble with my display. The bottom section of the screen is also displayed at the top...to the point where if I move my mouse the the bottom, I get a second arrow on the top.

Specs:

FIC PA2011 mobo
Intel P233/MMX (oc'd 266)
64MB RAM
STB Nitro 64 (display card)
MAG DJ530 (monitor)
Red Hat 9.0 Shrike
Kernel 2.4.20-8

I am new to Linux, but not to Unix. I want to go full Linux and get rid of Windows.

I have a picture of the problem
(Web address available upon request.)

Thanx

Normally I would say it's a misconfigured /etc/X11/XF86Config file, but that's a strange error. So:

1) Rule out hardware a problem. Does/has the monitor work(ed) with any other Linux distro or other OS? If it has recently worked or if you can swap it with another system and get it to work, then it's likely a misconfiguration.

2) If it is a simple misconfiguration, check the specs for you monitor in the manual or from the manufacturers website and re-configure X using the xf86config command as root. That should give you a text-based wizard that will walk you through setting up the Xserver. Anaconda may simply have probed your monitor incorrectly and put in the wrong settings.

I'm not sure how to do that.

I went through the 640/480, 800/600, & 1024/768 display modes. I managed to get them all correct in 256 color mode, but that's where it ends. I set the custom memory to 1MB because it kept saying 256KB. If I switch it to thousands or millions of colors, it winds up being 640x480 thousands or millions even though the display properties say 800x600 millions, for example.

The monitor has always worked fine with windows 98, and so has the Video card. The video card should be capable of 16bit color at 1024x768

Specifications:
Graphics chip: Cirrus Logic GD5434
Video memory: 1MB high-speed DRAM
System interface: PCI
Feature connector: standard VESA-compatible
Monitor compatibility: any SVGA multiple-frequency monitor
System support: Windows 3.x/95/NT (?linux?)
Certifications: FCC Class B

Features include:
64-bit display power produces exceptional graphics performance
16.7 million colors for photo-realistic images
Hardware accelerated Bit-Block transfers (BitBLTs), color expansion, and cursor operations
Switchless installation
Full support for VESA SuperVGA drivers

First login as root and make a backup copy of your current /etc/X11/XF86Config file. Then re-write a Xserver configuration file by doing:

xf86config

That should start a test based program that will let you select the components you have installed. Make sure that you have the specs somewhere handy, because you'll need them. You'll especially need to be careful when you select type of video card and monitor that you have. If you think that you've made a mistake, just cancel (cntrl-c) to get out of it and retry. You should be able to find the specs for your monitor here

If your configuration is even worse after you run xf86config, then just replace the new XF86Config file with the backup.

Ok... I managed to make a backup of XF86Config as XF86Config.backup. I'm in the /etc/X11 directory. I'm having a problem executing the xf86config program "command not found".

I realize this is all case sensative. What am I doing wrong?

It should be at:

/usr/X11R6/bin/xf86config

Try entering that whole line. Make sure the all the upper and lower case letters are correct.

If that doesn't work first use sudo to become root like this:

su -

That should prompt you for the root password.
Now search for xf86config using:

find / | grep xf86config

If it doesn't find that file, you might have to use the redhat specific version:

redhat-config-xfree86

That will launch a little GUI window. Under the Advanced tab, there is the option to configure your monitor as well as the video card.

Hope that helps.