I have a dual boot CentOS 5.2 / FC4 machine, and recently I have bought a new widescreen tft monitor. I used to use a plain 4:3 crt, and after plugging the 16:9 tft naturally X needed reconfiguring. This was easy in FC4, and seemed as easy in CentOS, but with a wrong result.
Basically, what I did was to run system-config-display to reconfigure for the new monitor and resolution. All goes well, but after X restarts, I see a strange picture: the resolution indeed goes to 1680x1050 as is supposed to, but is squeezed/shrinked/scaled horizontally to match a 4:3 aspect ratio, leaving two (unequal) black bands on the left and right side of the monitor.
This is specific to 1680x1050 resolution, while lower ones display ok up to the fact that the virtual screen is usually bigger than the displayed part so scrolling is necessarry (and this is annoying, for I cannot see the panel and the top of the window simultaneously).
The very same hardware and virtually same X configuration work perfectly ok on FC4, which suggests that this is not a hardware problem, nor an X problem. Further, as I see, FC4 has older version of virtually all software than CentOS.
I have tried various acrobatics with xorg.conf, but nothing helped; read Xorg.0.log inside out and back, compared to FC4, and everything seems essentially identical. X seems to work as everything is ok, so is mplayer (even in fullscreen), but the black bands remain there and the whole desktop is scaled to 4:3. The monitor "autoadjust" button also doesn't help (although it works in general).
I'm out of ideas where to look for the cause of this. If you wish, I can post xorg.conf and log files from both OSes, but they are mainly identical and I see nothing suspicious.
Btw, this is on an nVidia GeForce 4 using the default nv driver. The vesa driver doesn't support widescreen resolutions, while nvidia binary driver crashes X completely on start (but this is a known motherboard problem common to FC4 as well).
Is there some kernel setting or whatever that might "force" the graphics card to 4:3 aspect irrespective of X configuration? Some "filter" between what X tries to display and the actual signal to the monitor? What else can I try?
Any advice appreciated!
Best, :-) Marko
On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 3:08 PM, Marko Vojinovic vvmarko@panet.rs wrote:
I have a dual boot CentOS 5.2 / FC4 machine, and recently I have bought a new widescreen tft monitor. I used to use a plain 4:3 crt, and after plugging the 16:9 tft naturally X needed reconfiguring. This was easy in FC4, and seemed as easy in CentOS, but with a wrong result.
As some wise person suggested to me when I had this problem about three months ago, did you also set the screen resolution in System->Preferences? IIRC, that solved the problem on my machine.
HTH
mhr
On Sunday 02 November 2008 09:16, MHR wrote:
On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 3:08 PM, Marko Vojinovic vvmarko@panet.rs wrote:
I have a dual boot CentOS 5.2 / FC4 machine, and recently I have bought a new widescreen tft monitor. I used to use a plain 4:3 crt, and after plugging the 16:9 tft naturally X needed reconfiguring. This was easy in FC4, and seemed as easy in CentOS, but with a wrong result.
As some wise person suggested to me when I had this problem about three months ago, did you also set the screen resolution in System->Preferences? IIRC, that solved the problem on my machine.
You are talking about Gnome menus? The screen resolution is already set there as it should be, but doesn't solve my problem. But thanks for the thought.
Best, :-) Marko
On Sat, 2008-11-01 at 22:08 +0000, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
I have a dual boot CentOS 5.2 / FC4 machine, and recently I have bought a new widescreen tft monitor. I used to use a plain 4:3 crt, and after plugging the 16:9 tft naturally X needed reconfiguring. This was easy in FC4, and seemed as easy in CentOS, but with a wrong result.
Basically, what I did was to run system-config-display to reconfigure for the new monitor and resolution. All goes well, but after X restarts, I see a strange picture: the resolution indeed goes to 1680x1050 as is supposed to, but is squeezed/shrinked/scaled horizontally to match a 4:3 aspect ratio, leaving two (unequal) black bands on the left and right side of the monitor.
This sounds like the "Modes" line in the "Subsection Display" may not have the right settings. The manual/CD for the monitor should have the right settings. I would compare those against what the configuration process generated and manually edit if needed. Why the difference between FC4 and CentOS, I can't guess.
I don't have the URL, but some time ago I googled and found a very detailed description of the modes, their effects, "blanking" (the "black bands") and the relationship of all those. Go googling if you think if might help.
<snip>
Btw, this is on an nVidia GeForce 4 using the default nv driver. The vesa driver doesn't support widescreen resolutions, while nvidia binary driver crashes X completely on start (but this is a known motherboard problem common to FC4 as well).
Have you tried the nvidia drivers from rpmforge? It has drivers for both the older and newer nVidia cards, all ready for CentOS. I'm using the older driver now (standard CRT though, not a newer LCD/TFT wide-aspect screen) and it works flawlessly.
I've also used the stuff from the nvidia site, but abandoned it as soon as I found the older driver on rpmforge. So I can't say if that's a better way to go. Several on the list have espoused that route and had good results.
Is there some kernel setting or whatever that might "force" the graphics card to 4:3 aspect irrespective of X configuration? Some "filter" between what X tries to display and the actual signal to the monitor? What else can I try?
All I can think of is that "Modes" line I mentioned above.
Any advice appreciated!
Best, :-) Marko
<snip Sig stuff>
HTH
On Sunday 02 November 2008 12:26, William L. Maltby wrote:
On Sat, 2008-11-01 at 22:08 +0000, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
Basically, what I did was to run system-config-display to reconfigure for the new monitor and resolution. All goes well, but after X restarts, I see a strange picture: the resolution indeed goes to 1680x1050 as is supposed to, but is squeezed/shrinked/scaled horizontally to match a 4:3 aspect ratio, leaving two (unequal) black bands on the left and right side of the monitor.
This sounds like the "Modes" line in the "Subsection Display" may not have the right settings. The manual/CD for the monitor should have the right settings. I would compare those against what the configuration process generated and manually edit if needed. Why the difference between FC4 and CentOS, I can't guess.
Comparing the CentOS and Fedora Xorg.0.log I found that the actual modelines are just slightly different. Assuming that this difference might actually be important, I took the known-to-work modeline from Fedora's Xorg.0.log, copy-paste it in CentOS xorg.conf and forcing X to use that. But the result is the same.
I will also try to find modeline data in the monitor manual, but I doubt that it is not going to be any different than DDC values that X autodetects.
I don't have the URL, but some time ago I googled and found a very detailed description of the modes, their effects, "blanking" (the "black bands") and the relationship of all those. Go googling if you think if might help.
I'll look into that, to educate myself about modelines beyond the man page. But I have a feeling this problem is not related to modelines.
Btw, this is on an nVidia GeForce 4 using the default nv driver. The vesa driver doesn't support widescreen resolutions, while nvidia binary driver crashes X completely on start (but this is a known motherboard problem common to FC4 as well).
Have you tried the nvidia drivers from rpmforge? It has drivers for both the older and newer nVidia cards, all ready for CentOS. I'm using the older driver now (standard CRT though, not a newer LCD/TFT wide-aspect screen) and it works flawlessly.
Yes, I have tried the package from rpmforge, but it behaves the same way. But the problem with binary drivers is that my motherboard has a bug in the bios which autodetects and forces AGP to 8X, which in turn doesn't work for some reason. This is the same for both Fedora and CentOS, and I gave up on 3d acceleration on this hardware a long time ago. But this resolution problem is related to nv driver, present in CentOS while absent in Fedora. Therefore I believe it is unrelated to hardware issues.
Thanks for the help!
Best, :-) Marko
Marko Vojinovic schrieb:
On Sunday 02 November 2008 12:26, William L. Maltby wrote:
On Sat, 2008-11-01 at 22:08 +0000, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
Basically, what I did was to run system-config-display to reconfigure for the new monitor and resolution. All goes well, but after X restarts, I see a strange picture: the resolution indeed goes to 1680x1050 as is supposed to, but is squeezed/shrinked/scaled horizontally to match a 4:3 aspect ratio, leaving two (unequal) black bands on the left and right side of the monitor.
This sounds like the "Modes" line in the "Subsection Display" may not have the right settings. The manual/CD for the monitor should have the right settings. I would compare those against what the configuration process generated and manually edit if needed. Why the difference between FC4 and CentOS, I can't guess.
Comparing the CentOS and Fedora Xorg.0.log I found that the actual modelines are just slightly different. Assuming that this difference might actually be important, I took the known-to-work modeline from Fedora's Xorg.0.log, copy-paste it in CentOS xorg.conf and forcing X to use that. But the result is the same.
I only run CentOS on servers, but when I got my widescreen monitor at work, I couldn't get the full resolution with the X that came with OpenSuSE 10.3. Only OpenSuSE 11 works. Too bad that printing doesn't work in OpenSuSE 11 anymore.... My take: the X-server makes some assumptions that are not true for widescreen hardware and throws away the modelines it gets (because it thinks they won't work). Seems to have been fixed with later X releases (or patches). For desktop-use, there's little alternative to Ubuntu/OpenSuSE/Fedora and re-installing every couple of months (and living with new and surprising bugs every release).
Rainer
On Mon, 2008-11-03 at 10:56 +0100, Rainer Duffner wrote:
Marko Vojinovic schrieb:
On Sunday 02 November 2008 12:26, William L. Maltby wrote:
On Sat, 2008-11-01 at 22:08 +0000, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
Basically, what I did was to run system-config-display to reconfigure for the new monitor and resolution. All goes well, but after X restarts, I see a strange picture: the resolution indeed goes to 1680x1050 as is supposed to, but is squeezed/shrinked/scaled horizontally to match a 4:3 aspect ratio, leaving two (unequal) black bands on the left and right side of the monitor.
This sounds like the "Modes" line in the "Subsection Display" may not have the right settings. The manual/CD for the monitor should have the right settings. I would compare those against what the configuration process generated and manually edit if needed. Why the difference between FC4 and CentOS, I can't guess.
Comparing the CentOS and Fedora Xorg.0.log I found that the actual modelines are just slightly different. Assuming that this difference might actually be important, I took the known-to-work modeline from Fedora's Xorg.0.log, copy-paste it in CentOS xorg.conf and forcing X to use that. But the result is the same.
I only run CentOS on servers, but when I got my widescreen monitor at work, I couldn't get the full resolution with the X that came with OpenSuSE 10.3. Only OpenSuSE 11 works. Too bad that printing doesn't work in OpenSuSE 11 anymore.... My take: the X-server makes some assumptions that are not true for widescreen hardware and throws away the modelines it gets (because it thinks they won't work). Seems to have been fixed with later X releases (or patches). For desktop-use, there's little alternative to Ubuntu/OpenSuSE/Fedora and re-installing every couple of months (and living with new and surprising bugs every release).
FWIW, here is a section from /etc/X11/xorg.cong on a working 22 inch widescreen workstation running 1680x1050. We have around 20 machines, all workstations, some 32 bit some 64 bit, all running CentOS 5.2 on Asus hardware with various flavors of Nvidia graphics adapters, and all are 22 inch widescreen Viewsonic monitors.
Section "Monitor" Identifier "Monitor0" VendorName "Unknown" ModelName "Unknown" HorizSync 30.0 - 110.0 VertRefresh 50.0 - 150.0 Option "DPMS" EndSection
Section "Device" Identifier "Videocard0" Driver "nvidia" With all due respect, to suggest that CentOS is unsat for desktop use is simply incorrect. All servers(no GUI) and workstations we have run CentOS. Only for laptops do we consider Ubuntu LTS.
Cheers, B.J.
CentOS 5.2, Linux 2.6.18-92.1.13.el5 x86_64 04:11:11 up 6 days, 12:58, 1 user, load average: 0.03, 0.06, 0.08
Hi,
It is really strange, I would expect problems with FC4. Could you send your xorg.conf and describe your graphic hardware?
BR
Vaclav
Marko Vojinovic wrote:
I have a dual boot CentOS 5.2 / FC4 machine, and recently I have bought a new widescreen tft monitor. I used to use a plain 4:3 crt, and after plugging the 16:9 tft naturally X needed reconfiguring. This was easy in FC4, and seemed as easy in CentOS, but with a wrong result.
Basically, what I did was to run system-config-display to reconfigure for the new monitor and resolution. All goes well, but after X restarts, I see a strange picture: the resolution indeed goes to 1680x1050 as is supposed to, but is squeezed/shrinked/scaled horizontally to match a 4:3 aspect ratio, leaving two (unequal) black bands on the left and right side of the monitor.
This is specific to 1680x1050 resolution, while lower ones display ok up to the fact that the virtual screen is usually bigger than the displayed part so scrolling is necessarry (and this is annoying, for I cannot see the panel and the top of the window simultaneously).
The very same hardware and virtually same X configuration work perfectly ok on FC4, which suggests that this is not a hardware problem, nor an X problem. Further, as I see, FC4 has older version of virtually all software than CentOS.
I have tried various acrobatics with xorg.conf, but nothing helped; read Xorg.0.log inside out and back, compared to FC4, and everything seems essentially identical. X seems to work as everything is ok, so is mplayer (even in fullscreen), but the black bands remain there and the whole desktop is scaled to 4:3. The monitor "autoadjust" button also doesn't help (although it works in general).
I'm out of ideas where to look for the cause of this. If you wish, I can post xorg.conf and log files from both OSes, but they are mainly identical and I see nothing suspicious.
Btw, this is on an nVidia GeForce 4 using the default nv driver. The vesa driver doesn't support widescreen resolutions, while nvidia binary driver crashes X completely on start (but this is a known motherboard problem common to FC4 as well).
Is there some kernel setting or whatever that might "force" the graphics card to 4:3 aspect irrespective of X configuration? Some "filter" between what X tries to display and the actual signal to the monitor? What else can I try?
Any advice appreciated!
Best, :-) Marko
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Saturday 01 November 2008 22:08, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
Basically, what I did was to run system-config-display to reconfigure for the new monitor and resolution. All goes well, but after X restarts, I see a strange picture: the resolution indeed goes to 1680x1050 as is supposed to, but is squeezed/shrinked/scaled horizontally to match a 4:3 aspect ratio, leaving two (unequal) black bands on the left and right side of the monitor.
[snip]
The very same hardware and virtually same X configuration work perfectly ok on FC4
[snip]
Ok, just for the record, I resolved the issue, in the following way:
- took the exact modeline parameters for 1680x1050 (known to work) from FC4's Xorg.0.log and copy-pasted it into CentOS's xorg.conf - also took the DisplaySize, HorizSync and VertRefresh parameters from the Fedora's log and put it into xorg.conf - Disabled the DDC (undocumented option!!!) <----- CRUCIAL PART !!! - took the modeline parameters for various other resolutions since without DDC nothing gets autoconfigured - restarted X
Now everything works perfectly, and my hacked xorg.conf is just the default one with the following "Monitor" section:
Section "Monitor" Identifier "Monitor0" ModelName "LCD Panel 1680x1050" # hacked DisplaySize --- note that the values are *wrong*, # monitor is actually 470x300 mm DisplaySize 370 280 HorizSync 31.5 - 90.0 VertRefresh 60.0 - 60.0 Option "dpms" # turned off the DDC; didn't know which option would do # the job so put them both there Option "NoDDC" "true" Option "DDC" "false" # various modelines, taken from Fedora's log: Modeline "1680x1050" 147.14 1680 1784 1968 2256 1050 1051 1054 1087 -hsync +vsync Modeline "1400x1050" 122.00 1400 1488 1640 1880 1050 1052 1064 1082 +hsync +vsync Modeline "800x600" 40.00 800 840 968 1056 600 601 605 628 +hsync +vsync Modeline "640x480" 25.20 640 656 752 800 480 490 492 525 -hsync -vsync EndSection
Hopefully someone with a similar problem maybe finds this useful. ;-)
Best, :-) Marko
On Mon, 2008-11-10 at 00:20 +0000, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
On Saturday 01 November 2008 22:08, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
Basically, what I did was to run system-config-display to reconfigure for the new monitor and resolution. All goes well, but after X restarts, I see a strange picture: the resolution indeed goes to 1680x1050 as is supposed to, but is squeezed/shrinked/scaled horizontally to match a 4:3 aspect ratio, leaving two (unequal) black bands on the left and right side of the monitor.
[snip]
The very same hardware and virtually same X configuration work perfectly ok on FC4
[snip]
Ok, just for the record, I resolved the issue, in the following way:
- took the exact modeline parameters for 1680x1050 (known to work) from FC4's
Xorg.0.log and copy-pasted it into CentOS's xorg.conf
- also took the DisplaySize, HorizSync and VertRefresh parameters from the
Fedora's log and put it into xorg.conf
- Disabled the DDC (undocumented option!!!) <----- CRUCIAL PART !!!
- took the modeline parameters for various other resolutions since without DDC
nothing gets autoconfigured
- restarted X
Now everything works perfectly, and my hacked xorg.conf is just the default one with the following "Monitor" section:
Section "Monitor" Identifier "Monitor0" ModelName "LCD Panel 1680x1050" # hacked DisplaySize --- note that the values are *wrong*, # monitor is actually 470x300 mm DisplaySize 370 280 HorizSync 31.5 - 90.0 VertRefresh 60.0 - 60.0 Option "dpms" # turned off the DDC; didn't know which option would do # the job so put them both there Option "NoDDC" "true" Option "DDC" "false" # various modelines, taken from Fedora's log: Modeline "1680x1050" 147.14 1680 1784 1968 2256 1050 1051 1054 1087 -hsync +vsync Modeline "1400x1050" 122.00 1400 1488 1640 1880 1050 1052 1064 1082 +hsync +vsync Modeline "800x600" 40.00 800 840 968 1056 600 601 605 628 +hsync +vsync Modeline "640x480" 25.20 640 656 752 800 480 490 492 525 -hsync -vsync EndSection
Hopefully someone with a similar problem maybe finds this useful. ;-)
Well, I think its utility is such that it ought to be in the wiki hints. If you have time and interest, why don't you ask the folks for access and location in the wiki? Adding a little commentary about the meaning of the values would make it useful to similar, but slightly different, setups as well.
Glad you "fingered" it out.
Best, :-) Marko
<snip>
-
B.J. McClure -
Marko Vojinovic -
MHR -
Rainer Duffner -
Vaclav Mocek -
William L. Maltby