Retrieving X11 display settings at run-time?
 

Hi guys,

I am using Linux for a couple of years now, but I am encountering a big problem recently, especially with newer distros (I think in particular those which incorporate XGL).

The problem is that I can't boot X11 anymore. It doesn't crash or even report errors, but the screen will just stay black. I'm using a Radeon 9800 Pro and an Acer 17" TFT.
I tried everything, using other video drivers (ati, radeon, fglrx) and tuning the monitor settings, but no luck. Even using my Ubuntu box'es xorg.conf where it works just fine will produce the same results.

The problem occured with the Kororaa XGL live-cd and with the recent RC3 of SUSE Enterprise Desktop 10 (SLED10). Here is the xorg.conf I am using with the latter: http://dump.finitestate.org/xorg.conf.txt

Grep'ing through the X11 log for warnings yields this:

No errors were indicated.

Now, the only thing I can imagine is that XGL somehow sends my TFT into a bad display mode, so I was wondering if there is a possibility to read from the command line what display mode X11 is using when I start it? I want to check if this is the problem.

Or maybe you know where the problem is? I'm getting pretty desperate...

Thanks,
Matthias

I think that "fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:1:0:1) found" is the problem is a device section specified does the PCI bit match?

Thats probably nothing just means, that the graphics adapter probably has to Output devices like dvi and vga and only one is configured, though you could try to plug your monitor to the other one.

But I think is strange is this part of the log file:
Sounds almost as if there is something wrong with your graphics card. Did you flash some differnet BIOS on the card, I know it is possible to do that with some ATI cards?

That is probably the easiest part to begin with: xserver obviously doesn't find any fonts, so maybe you should start with correcting paths to fonts directorys in your xorg.conf

Good luck,

Isis

Hi,

the line with the missing device section is meaningless, as you said. It's only important if you use two monitors.

As to the other three lines (bad BIOS chksum etc): I get the exact same output on my Ubuntu box, and it works just fine. The "unknown 3rd party board" just means it doesn't know the vendor of my graphics card (it's an ATI card), but it does recognize my chipset.

The font paths, yes that's pretty strange. I might look into that, but I doubt it's the problem.

Oh and to my initial question: Is there a way to determine which display mode X is currently using while it's running?

Hmm I don't know a different way than to switch to a console and do a tail -f /var/log/Xorg.0.log

Maybe there is something wrong with the frequencies you entered in your xorg.conf? Does your Monitor just shows a blank screen or does it go to standby mode?

When using the fglrx driver, it is possible to change display modes using ctrl+alt++ or ctrl+alt+-
I am not sure if this is a feature of the fglrx driver or the X server itself, but it should work at least with the fglrx driver.
Now, if you use these combinations and you get your screen working, then the problem is the display mode.
In addition, if I remember correctly, when I tried once to use xgl with fglrx, I had the same problem but I was able to see the cursor.

As for detecting the display mode... here is part of my Xorg.0.log:
My display mode is shown here: