I installed Centos 6.2/i386 on a machine last night with a 1920x1080 monitor. The installer ran in graphical mode and looked fine. After the install was finished I rebooted and ran through the "firstboot" stuff (set up user, etc) with no problem and, again, it looked good.
After that, when I should have seen the gdm login screen, all I got was the blue background but not the box with the usernames in it, so there is no way to log in.
"telinit 3", login to the text console, no problem. Type "startx", back to the same empty blue screen that gdm shows me.
[root@ws194 log]# cat /etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain ws194 ws194.ltsp ::1 localhost localhost.localdomain ws194 ws194.ltsp [root@ws194 log]# uname -a Linux ws194.ltsp 2.6.32-220.2.1.el6.i686 #1 SMP Thu Dec 22 18:50:52 GMT 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux [root@ws194 log]#
I rsynced /etc/skel to /home/myusername before running startx but that made no difference. Still got the blank blue screen.
I tried disabling the Composite extension as directed here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/unable-to-startx-after-...
Nothing changed.
I don't see anything in /var/log/Xorg.0.log that looks too interesting; it appears that X figures it's running fine.
This was working fine with a smaller monitor on Centos 5.7. Plus the Centos 6 installer looked fine, and the blue screen also looks nice and crisp,
On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:57:58 -0600 Frank Cox wrote:
I installed Centos 6.2/i386 on a machine last night with a 1920x1080 monitor. The installer ran in graphical mode and looked fine. After the install was finished I rebooted and ran through the "firstboot" stuff (set up user, etc) with no problem and, again, it looked good.
After that, when I should have seen the gdm login screen, all I got was the blue background but not the box with the usernames in it, so there is no way to log in.
I've been playing with this some more and while I haven't found a solution I think I can now better define the problem.
If I boot that computer with kernel parameter "nomodeset", I don't get the fancy "Centos 6" graphic with the spinning doodad; instead I get a white and blue bar across the bottom of the screen and then it ends up at the gdm login screen. Which looks normal and lets me log in. And my desktop comes up as it should.
BUT the screen resolution is only 1280x1024. I think (though I forgot to check for sure) it's using the VESA driver instead of the Intel driver when I use the "nomodeset" kernel parameter.
Booting up normally (without the "nomodeset" parameter) the screen comes up in 1920x1080 resolution like it should, with the Centos 6 graphic and the spinning doodad, but it ends up with the gdm background screen and no way to log into it.
However:
If I boot into runlevel 3 and log in and then run startx, I get the blue background screen and apparently my whole desktop is running but it's just not showing up! I discovered that if I right-click on that blue background screen after logging in and running startx, I get the "Create Folder/Create Launcher/Create Document/Open in Terminal/etc" menu that you usually get when right-clicking on the gnome desktop. Opening a terminal from that menu gets me gnome-terminal, and if I type "gnome-panel" into that terminal I get an error message telling me that gnome-panel is already running. Looking at a list of running processes shows me gnote and a whole bunch of gnome stuff; i.e. the gnome desktop is actually up and running. The panel and desktop icons are just not showing up on the screen; only the desktop background. However, if I right-click on the desktop background and "Create Folder", that folder now shows up on the desktop. (It's the only thing on the desktop.)
"killall gnome-panel" appears to work (it appears to do nothing, actually, but that's normal) but the gnome-panel still doesn't show up. Normally, when you type killall gnome-panel the panel goes away and comes right back. Since it's already gone (but apparently still running) it stays gone even though it appears to restart like it should.
This leads me to the conclusion that the problem can't be that any part of the gnome installation is missing because it works at the lower 1280x1024 resolution.
I'm open to any ideas.
On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 22:55:36 -0600 Frank Cox wrote:
This leads me to the conclusion that the problem can't be that any part of the gnome installation is missing because it works at the lower 1280x1024 resolution.
Upon further investigation I think this problem stems from an unnecessarily huge virtual screen, but I don't know how to change it.
When running at 1920x1024, if I switch to runlevel 3 and run startx I get nothing but the blue background screen. I can move the mouse cursor to the top, the bottom and the right side of the screen, and it stops. But when I move it to the left side of the screen, it disappears and seems to keep right on going. Unfortunately, the screen itself doesn't scroll to follow it; nothing moves at all.
However, I just discovered something really interesting. I mentioned before that I can get the desktop working fine at 1280x1024 by using the "nomodeset" kernel parameter. So I created a couple of directories on my desktop at the 1920x1080 resolution by right-clicking on the desktop background and selecting "Create Folder". I put the directories more-or-less in the middle of the visible desktop.
Then I rebooted the machine with the nomodeset kernel parameter and logged into the lower-resolution desktop (where I get all of the usual menus and icons and whatnot).
And... The icons for those directories were half-showing on the extreme right of the desktop, near the top of the screen. Only about half of the actual icons showed, the rest was cut off by the right edge of the screen.
This indicates to me that the virtual screen is somehow much larger than the actual screen and that's what's causing the problem.
I added "Virtual 1920 1024" to my 10-monitor.conf file and put that back into the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d directory and rebooted as usual (without the nomodeset parameter) to see what would happen. Nothing changed. gdm had no login window and if I switched to runlevel 3 and ran startx as my username I had my test directory icons back in the middle of the screen and no menus or anything else.
I changed it to say "Virtual 1024 768" to see what would happen and again, nothing changed.
I think this machine has a much larger virtual screen than the physical screen. How can I match the virtual screen size to the physical size?
Here is the 10-monitor.conf file that I've been experimenting with. Note that the computer works the same with or without this 10-monitor.conf file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d, and there is no xorg.conf file in /etc/X11.
Section "Monitor" Identifier "Monitor0" EndSection
Section "Device" Identifier "Device0" Driver "intel" EndSection
Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen0" Device "Device0" Monitor "Monitor0" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Depth 16 Modes "1920x1080" Virtual 1920 1080 EndSubSection EndSection
On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 12:56:40 -0600 Frank Cox wrote:
I think this machine has a much larger virtual screen than the physical screen. How can I match the virtual screen size to the physical size?
I've finally found the solution to this problem with one small aesthetic issue remaining.
THE SOLUTION I changed the colour depth to 16 by putting a file named 10-monitor.conf into /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d. Everything now works and looks (mostly) like it should.
This is 10-monitor.conf:
Section "Monitor" Identifier "Monitor0" EndSection
Section "Device" Identifier "Device0" Driver "intel" EndSection
Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen0" Device "Device0" Monitor "Monitor0" DefaultDepth 16 SubSection "Display" Depth 16 Modes "1920x1080" EndSubSection EndSection
THE REMAINING MINOR ISSUE For some reason, the upper left two-thirds of the desktop background is darker than the rest of the desktop background. It's easier to show than to explain how it looks, so anyone interested can view it here:
http://www.melvilletheatre.com/1920x1024screenshot.png
The gdm login screen looks pretty much exactly the same, with the darker background on the upper left.
I tried changing the background to a different picture but the result was the same -- still a dark side on the desktop.
Any window placed on the desktop looks normal; the dark effect is only on the desktop background(and the login screen). So I guess I can live with this if I have to, but if anyone knows how to get rid of that effect I'm all ears.
On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 9:16 PM, Frank Cox theatre@melvilletheatre.com wrote:
On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 12:56:40 -0600
THE REMAINING MINOR ISSUE For some reason, the upper left two-thirds of the desktop background is darker than the rest of the desktop background. It's easier to show than to explain how it looks, so anyone interested can view it here:
Looks to me as if a 1024x768 rendering of the background image is being layered on top of a rendering of the same image that has been scaled up to 1920x1024. Have you checked whether you can actually place icons on the lower and right parts of the screen? I'm speculating that the desktop manager is still operating at 1024x768 even though the X screen is larger.
On Fri, 2012-01-13 at 14:34 -0800, Bart Schaefer wrote:
On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 9:16 PM, Frank Cox theatre@melvilletheatre.com wrote:
On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 12:56:40 -0600
THE REMAINING MINOR ISSUE For some reason, the upper left two-thirds of the desktop background is darker than the rest of the desktop background. It's easier to show than to explain how it looks, so anyone interested can view it here:
Looks to me as if a 1024x768 rendering of the background image is being layered on top of a rendering of the same image that has been scaled up to 1920x1024. Have you checked whether you can actually place icons on the lower and right parts of the screen? I'm speculating that the desktop manager is still operating at 1024x768 even though the X screen is larger.
I quite recently had something that looked quite similar on my iMac g5 when I had a cable plugged in to the VGA port. he system apparently overlaid the VGA screen over the screen on the built in LCD. Does the OP have a second monitor attached to he system?
On Fri, 13 Jan 2012 23:48:38 +0100 Louis Lagendijk wrote:
I quite recently had something that looked quite similar on my iMac g5 when I had a cable plugged in to the VGA port. he system apparently overlaid the VGA screen over the screen on the built in LCD. Does the OP have a second monitor attached to he system?
This just has a single monitor on it (and just one port to hook a monitor up to). I wonder, though, if there's something under the video setup that's referencing a second (non-existent) monitor.
I'll see what System-Preferences-Display has to say for itself when I'm back at that office.
On Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:34:42 -0800 Bart Schaefer wrote:
On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 9:16 PM, Frank Cox theatre@melvilletheatre.com wrote:
On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 12:56:40 -0600
THE REMAINING MINOR ISSUE For some reason, the upper left two-thirds of the desktop background is darker than the rest of the desktop background. It's easier to show than to explain how it looks, so anyone interested can view it here:
Looks to me as if a 1024x768 rendering of the background image is being layered on top of a rendering of the same image that has been scaled up to 1920x1024.
I agree. It's even more obvious with a different desktop background that's actually a picture. It looks like I've got the background image properly scaled with a smaller portion of the image (I'm not entirely sure if it's the whole image or not) being overprinted on it.
Have you checked whether you can actually place icons on the lower and right parts of the screen? I'm speculating that the desktop manager is still operating at 1024x768 even though the X screen is larger.
I haven't actually tried to place an icon on there. I do know that I can place an application window anywhere on the desktop with no problem (that I've noticed so far). I'll try putting an icon there when I'm next at that office and see what happens.
On Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:01:16 -0600 Frank Cox wrote:
I haven't actually tried to place an icon on there. I do know that I can place an application window anywhere on the desktop with no problem (that I've noticed so far). I'll try putting an icon there when I'm next at that office and see what happens.
Well, now I've tried it. I can put an icon anywhere on the desktop with no problem.
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Bart Schaefer -
Frank Cox -
Louis Lagendijk