Hello,

I just started using an HDTV for a monitor, and when I log in as myself, the monitor goes blank & says "Mode not supported". When I log in as root, it goes to the 1920 x 1080 mode and all is good. How can I tell it in the XF86Config file to use this mode only (there doesn't seem to be a resolution entry, so it'd have to be whatever the horizontal and vertical frequencies are for the HDTV), or how can I delete whatever it is trying to use in my regular account to make it default like it did when I logged in as root?

TIA,
anw

What's your video card and driver?

You could start by setting a virtual screen size, or even giving it a clue in the Modes line of the Screen section. Take out stupid modes like 1024x768. Then run X -Configure.X goes through the following process here

Huh? 1200x800 - that's ridiculous, delete that for starters
OK, we seem to have no valid modes. Check what this hardware can do anyhow
It seems we can use 1200x800 - let's roll up a mode for that (X has a very short memory
That passed the smoke test. Not a bad attempt - let him run!

Don't use the vesa driver because that wants a vesa mode which were drawn up before any of these widescreen monitors were even thought of.

Yeah, what I don't know is the syntax for setting, for example, a 1920x1080 mode. It's not on the man page. It has all sorts of stuff about vertical and horizontal frequency, but no resolution. I don't know what these frequencies are for this TV; my last monitor (a real monitor) published those in the manual, but this HDTV only brags that it can go to 125 somethings (Hz, kHz, or mHz; I'll have to check the manual), without even specifying whether that is a vert or horiz number.

Do you know the syntax for specifying the resolution?

OK, I've used xvidtune and the manual to find all the parameters I need for the HDTV monitor, and I can log in graphically as root (which in the past I've never used). When I try to log in with my regular user ID though, for some reason it is trying to put the video to 1440 x 600, or something like that the monitor doesn't support. I've put various things in the xorg.conf file, but it seems to ignore it when it logs in under my user ID. What gives?

One usually ends up with several versions of xorg.conf in /etc/X11. Check both users are using the same one. In var/log/Xorg.0.log, just under the Markers it mentions
(==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Sun Oct 18 16:42:02 2009
(==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"

Another one of the pieces of nearly useless information I picked up is that X Actually starts very differently when you're on runlevel 5 than when you're a luser starting X. 2 different programs involved, gdm and xdm. Have you tried running 'init 5' instead of startx? Another thing to try is in the screens section, put a Modeline. You add this much to the screen section (usually near the end of xorg.conf)

Modes "1920x1080"
Modeline "1920x1080" <details>

Get the details by filling in numbers here

http://xtiming.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/xtiming.pl

Last night, I tried all those things except the runlevel 5 trick, but I found the problem. I'm using the KDE desktop, which had never been initialized on the root login. In my regular user account, though, there was this run control file (something like kdeRandRrc, or krandrrc, or something like that) that had a screen entry "1400x1050". I changed that to 1920x1080, and voila! Everything works (well, except when I log out it doesn't display the login screen; I have to ctl-alt F2, then ctl-alt F7 to get the login screen to display again).

I think this file has something to do with screen rotation or something weird like that, but why it decided it wanted to set my screen up as 1400x1050 is beyond me, and why the HDTV couldn't support that, when it can support 1920x1080, eludes me as well.

Thanks!!