Set wrong resolution in Fedora 10 -- screen black, no automatic reset
 

I'm using an HDTV as a monitor and wanted to adjust the resolution of the display in Fedora Core 10. The software detected available resolutions and I selected 1280 x800 or something similar and the screen went black. The screen never automatically returned to the previous resolution and now whenever I log in the screen goes black and I can't operate the computer. Is there anyway to repair this or do I have to resinstall the OS?

I've tried logging in as 'root' with my password under 'other' but strangely it does not seem to authenticate user... I'm kind of at a loss. Am I going to have to reinstall the entire OS over screen resolution?

P.S. topic says 9, but I meant 10

One way of reverting to the original res is to delete/rename the file called xorg.conf under /etc/X11/ directory. Then when you log in, it will re-write that file with the original values.

It will also help if you can specify what video card are you using and have you installed the proper drivers.

As for root login, you cannot login as root in the graphical desktop under 10.

I forgot to add how. Assuming you are comfortable in the cli, [command line interface]

1) When you get to the login screen, hit Ctrl+Alt+F1. This will let you login into a cli session.

2) Login as root.

3) Issue the command at the prompt.
mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.blackscreen [just renaming it]

4) Logout and hit Alt+F7, back to the login screen.

5) Kill the X session (login screen) once by hitting Ctrl+Alt+Backspace.

6) When the screen returns, login.

Not sure how to use the CLI -- literally the first time I've used Linux. The video card is a NVIDiA geforce 8500. I'm sure the video card can handle the resolution I just think its the monitor/TV that can't display it.

cntrl + alt + f1 doesn't seem to make anything happen

A little help with the terminology and practice

http://www.linux.org/lessons/beginner/toc.html

After hours of doing this I've managed to get myself into cd /etc/X11 , but there is no 'xorg.conf' located there, so I'm at a dead end. Any other suggestions?

Have you installed the nvidia drivers?

Ctrl + Alt + F1 gets you into a text only login screen where you will see a "login: " message. If F1 doesn't work, try F2 until F6, all do the same.

Once you login into text (CLI) mode, what does the command "yum list installed | grep nvidia" return ? [..without the quotes..]

Hey everyone, thanks for the help and for being patient wiht me, I eventually found a solution in case anyone else runs into this sort of problem:

getting to CLI you press cntrl+alt+f3 in fedora 10

login by typing you user name (case sensitive) and password

type the following command:

rm -f ~/.config/monitors.xml

(that's rm[space]-f[space]~/.config/monitors.xml)

hit enter, hit cntrl + alt + f1, log in, and it should start right on up to that wonderful background image :-) .

Thanks for the fix!

removing "monitors.xml" and "xorg.conf" worked like a charm...

I do want to add that for those that can't even get see anything using cntrl-alt-F1-7 (either black or totally messed up), and so wouldn't even be able to delete those files, go into run initlevel 3 (which boots up until the graphical X part) - the default is level 5.

Here's a short, great resource on how to do that on-the-fly during your grub boot, or permanently by editing '/etc/inittab' (here you would do it on-the fly obviously since you can't see anything after Grub :)

http://fedorasolved.org/post-install-solutions/runlevel

cheers and thanks again