Been using debian etch for 1 year, but a few days ago my screen resolution changed from 1024x768 at 75hz to 640x480 at a blinking 60hz and all options dissapeared as well.
Trying to use a text editor to change the etc. x11 xorg.cong file, don't have any experience with text editors and can't find info on how to become root in nano or gedit.

Start a console. From the command line use the command:

su

to become root. Once you are running as root then start nano or gedit or whatever you want.

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Steve Stites

I see, thanks

sudo gedit
sudo nano

whoops didn't mean to step on anyones post
on my distro the SU is locked so if you dont want to do sudo this sudo that you can do sudo su and you will remain as root until you type exit

do you think its possible to reset the resolution from "configuration editor" using the default and mandatory option, and would you happen to know what is meant when it says "no schema"

may have to give up on nano, it prints out info so basic its useless then at the bottom it says "read 117 lines" but can't get it to display any detail.

I'm using etch, any opinions on a different os, the ones you pay for. Don't want to spend weeks trying to set a basic monitor display option.

Do you use a proprietary driver? If you use nvisia, you should have nvidia-settings, which can set resolution from a GUI. And have you tried gedit? It's a lot less cryptic than nano (not that nano is all that cryptic if you read the legend at the bottom).

I kind of think that sudo is a bit more convenient than su - but it doesn't work out of the box on Debian.

For situations like the ones you are using nano for I prefer to use mped. I suggest that you install mped from synaptic and give it a try.

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Steve Stites

Thanks all for your help, I finally had success. Nano was working ok I didn't realize it stopped at the bottom of the file and all I had to do was scroll up. I downloaded "dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg" while root in terminal and this restored the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file giving me options with the resolution but it wasn't advanced enough to also provide different refresh options so I had to type those in manually and in the process of that I did it in a way that my computer couldn't restart. So I had to fix that from the terminal at the start of the boot that looks like ms-dos. I was worried sick because nano was the only text editor it would open but I was able to get through it and make the corrections to expand the hz. range to read 48-75 instead of typing it "70" "72" "75" like the resolutions rates. It needs a range then the different refresh rates will be available according to what the monitor can handle. What an ordeal, but I gained a lot of confidence with debian over this. All I can say is you must learn nano and aptitude because they seem to be the only things available when the system can't start.

I wanted to say one more thing, another trick that saved me was having a knoppix os on a cd. It allowed me to use the computer from a cd drive and get info on the internet while the main system was down. That little cd is a life saver.