Need to Reset Screen Resolution Out-of-range on Ubuntu 10.04
 

While trying to get the screen resolution I need, I have set the value to a setting that my monitor will not display. When my Ubuntu 10.04 boots, the screen just displays the out-of-range message and I cannot use it.

I think I found part of the solution on this page
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config/Resolution
which says to delete a file:
rm ~/.config/monitors.xml

Someone told me that I need to boot from grup into single-user mode, and I found out how to do that here:
http://blog.troyastle.com/2010/06/bo...untu-1004.html

My problem is that I cannot find the monitors.xml file.
The command: ls /home -a
shows only: . ..
I thought it should have a subdirectory containing .config and all of my other files. What do I need to do to access my account home directory so I can delete that file?

I am trying to use a flaky Nvidia driver so I will probably have to go through this process a few times before I get it to work. Thanks for any help,

Lloyd

Hello,

The ls command you provided is listing the files within the /home directory ONLY, and not the subdirectories. Before we go any further with your issue, perform the ls command under your /home/USER directory, of course replacing USER with your own username.

Cheers,

Josh

Josh,
On my system the command: ls -a
shows the subdirectories as well as the hidden files.
When I enter the command ls by itself it shows no files or directories.

Hold on, what exactly do you mean?

Josh,
To say it in other words, the directory /home appears to be empty.
As far as I can see at this point there are no subdirectories or files in it.
I cannot find the home directory for my user account, so I cannot change the file it contains.

If Ubuntu still places the user home directory in /home, then there must be a reason why it is not visible to me at this time. I provided the links to the pages I was working on so you could see how I got to where I am. Have you tried booting from grub as described in that link, and is your user directory available from there on your system?

Lloyd~

When you enter the Grub menu, select "Recovery Mode" (second entry). This will show a lot of text during system boot, then a menu will appear. Run "xfix". That will reset your faulty config. You can then continue normal boot from there.

Mr. Bill,
That doesn't seem to work. I hit the down-arrow to select recovery mode then hit enter. My version of Ubuntu doesn't show any text or any menu. The monitor shows a blank screen and then it shows the error saying that the signal is out of range.

Hmmm... That's peculiar. I'm also running 10.04. Just tried "Recovery Mode" to see if it had changed since 8.04, but I still got the low-res text and menu before x starts. :scratch: However, they did remove the all-powerful XFIX and replaced it with Boot into Failsafe Graphics Mode.

Guess we'll try a different approach: Have you tried accessing your /home directory from a live/rescue CD? That should allow you to edit or remove the offending config file...

Mr.Bill, Thanks for the suggestions. Booting from the live CD lets me look at the file I need to delete but it only gives me read access to my files. I would guess that the differences we see between our two systems are because the miserable Nvidia driver I am trying to use does not support some modes and features.

After having all of this time to think about the problem, I am feeling that it is likely that the problem is that grub does not mount the partition which contains my home directory. When I installed Linux the advice I got was that I should place my /home directory on a separate partition. It might be that mounting my home directory normally occurs in the initialization process after the point where I have access to grub.

The problem is figuring out how to mount this partition from the command line. I have seem the mount command used so I have a general idea of what it does, but when I have searched for information on the mount command in the past all I found was man pages. I also need to know what device is the partition that contains my home directory. I am sure that there are examples and other more friendly explanations of how to use the mount command, so I will keep looking.

Today I went through the whole process of learning how to mount the partition with my home directory. I deleted the file monitors.xml as described in first link above, but the system still comes up with the monitor showing an error message saying the signal is out-of-range.

Apparently this is not the right forum to ask this kind of question. Where can I go to get advice?

I was getting the out of range error upon booting 11.04 but saw a helpful post about setting the correct values for my monitor in StartUp-Manager. After setting the right Rez, no more out of range errors. Hope this may be useful....

Bob,
Did you make a note of where the post can be found, which values to set, or what they should be set to?

When I first installed the driver from Nvida, I had to manually change the Nvidia setting every time after I booted the system before I could get a usable display. I tried installing Startup-Manager and using it to set what I thought would be reasonable display parameters. As nearly as I can remember it, that is how I got my system in the unusable state that caused me to post my question to this forum. I finally was able to fully boot the system, and the first thing I did was uninstall Startup-Manager! My experience with Startup-Manager leads me to think that it is _dangerous_ and does not have the necessary help info or user documentation. For now I am running the system without the driver from Nvidia and wondering if it is feasible to use the proprietary driver for Ubuntu.

I posted this question to UbuntForums.org and got some more responses here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1753454

I did not quickly find the post, but the answer is to set the values per your monitor. Mine is max resolution of 1280x1024 so I put in that value in the boot options in display and max color depth 24 bits. it was too low by the default setting. I also set the Advanced tab boot loader menu resolution to 1280x1024. Now the system boots without the error message. It's a pretty simple fix if that is reason for the error message. I am also using the Nvidia drivers but they seem to work ok for me. Good luck.

out of range
 

Here is the link to the post I mentioned that got me on the right track:
http://ubuntuguide.net/signal-out-of...atty-installed
Props to Ubuntu Sharing!