Unfortunately, none of this survives a reboot. I have to run the four command lines, apply the new settings then spend five minutes tweaking the monitor all over again every time the system is restarted.

There's a site where you can write your own modelines, and you can alter the one you have to adjust things.http://xtiming.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/xtiming.pl

Put a decent modeline in from there. take it, tweak it, and generally make yourself happy with it.

For this one "1280x1024_60.00" 109.00 1280 1368 1496 1712 1024 1027 1034 1063

1280 is the right hand edge of the visible; 1368 is the right hand edge of invisible; 1496 is left edge of invisible; and 1712 is left edge of the visible, which is also 0 of the next line. The next four figures are similar for the vertical.

BTW, 109.00 (Mhz) is the dot clock, the product of 1712x1063x60 = 109.19 Mhz. So the final result will be just slightly different based on the 0.19 Mhz difference in the dot clock.

Have I missed a post somewhere? What 4 commands are you referring to?
If it's just xrandr, that should be possible to configure permanently by using xorg.conf file.

As for the modeline - if it's an LCD, there's really no need to have extra 33% of the screen width dedicated for beam repositioning, which doesn't happen in an LCD. Whatever tool you're using to generate the modeline, set reduced blanking to enabled, and use that modeline.

As for having to fiddle with the monitor every time you set the mode - this is a common occurrence with modes the monitor does not recognize. It will work in the mode, it just won't remember the phase/clock settings for next time you use it. The above recommendation (use modeline with RB) may help with that.

And I am back.

The 4 command lines I referred to were:

# xrandr --output VGA1 --right-of LVDS1
# cvt 1280 1024 70
"1280x1024_70.00" 129.00 1280 1368 1504 1728 1024 1027 1034 1069 -hsync +vsync
# xrandr --newmode "1280x1024_70.00" 129.00 1280 1368 1504 1728 1024 1027 1034 1069 -hsync +vsync
# xrandr --addmode VGA1 "1280x1024_70.00"
# xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1280x1024_70.00 --rate 59.8

They are 5 now. I hadn't realized I could do the last one, I was doing it with a GUI app.

So it still does not survive across reboots, but that part is solved easily with a script. What no script can do for me is press the buttons on the side of the monitor and tweak it until the image fits.