Ubuntu
xorg package

setting resolution with NVIDIA GeForce 9400 GT card

Asked by kiriath-arba

System is booting at 800x600 and the desired resolution with the Philips 191EW monitor is 1366x768 @ 60Hz.
Installed the NVIDIA driver in Jaunty 9.04 via System>Administration>Hardware Drivers and so now have the NVIDIA GUI to make changes with. Changing to 1366x768 worked fine but were not permitted to save the changes to the xorg.conf file. Changed the permissions using:

sudo chmod g+w /etc/X11/xorg.conf
sudo chmod g+w /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup

But still denied permission so worked around it manually. The GUI allows you to preview the updated xorg.conf file before attempting to save it, so copy and pasted the contents into a new file using sudo gedit which was then used to replace the original xorg.conf

The new xorg.conf file contains the section:

Section "Screen"
      Identifier "Screen0"
      Device "Device0"
      Monitor "Monitor0"
      DefaultDepth 24
      Option "TwinView" "0"
      Option "metamodes" "1366x768_60 +0+0"
      Subsection "Display"
            Depth 24
      EndSubsection
EndSection

System is still booting to 800x600 however. Thought of removing "metamodes" from the above option, but I'd prefer to understand the changes I'm making before recklessly blasting ahead. After consulting textbook, also thought of adding:

            Modes "1366x768"

to the "Display" Subsection, but don't want to mess it up through experimentation.

Might do some more searching in the forum at http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=14
There is also the nvidia-bug-report.sh utility which can be emailed directly to NVIDIA. But am posting here first in case there is something simple I've overlooked.

By the way, the new xorg.conf file has a comment line at the beginning which reads, "# Note that some configuration settings that could be done previously in this file, now are automatically configured by the server and settings here are ignored."

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kiriath-arba
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Revision history for this message
Isak Frants (isakfrants) said : 		#1

You don't have to chmod anything, you really shouldn't. You just have to launch nvidia-settings with admin rights.
gksudo nvidia-settings
Otherwise you just launch nvidia-settings with user rights. Then you wont be able to save the settings to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#2

xorg.conf has been largely ignored by cards since Ubuntu 8.04 and it's not just in ubuntu as it seems this type of thing has been pulled into the kernel grrrr

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kiriath-arba (pjrobinson-kol-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#3

Thanks for your comments Isak and Tom.

The changes made to the permissions for xorg.conf & xorg.conf.backup have been reversed so that they are now back to their original state.

I've run the nvidia-bug-report.sh utility and emailed the output log file off to Nvidia to see if they can help.

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kiriath-arba (pjrobinson-kol-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#4

By the way, I did launch nvidia-settings with admin rights as in:

gksudo nvidia-settings

and saved everything but it is still booting to 800x600. Good to learn that though for future reference.

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#5

Nicely done :)
I hope they can help with this, please let us know how helpful they are and if they give an answer it'd be nice to hear how you did fix it :)
Regards from
Tom :)

Revision history for this message
kiriath-arba (pjrobinson-kol-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#6

A friend with more Linux experience was able to solve this one. I was not with him at the time and so can't provide exact details, although he did have this to say:

"It looks like there are two programs that set the screen resolution on your computer. There's the nvidia supplied one - which is completely ignored because you don't call nvidia-settings at any point. There's also the standard one, which was
the one that was changing the display size. When you go to Settings -> Display it gives an error message, with one button leading to one program and the other button leading to the nvidia one, which you were always using."

By "Settings -> Display" perhaps my friend's actually talking about "System -> Preferences -> Display"

[The man page for nvidia-settings specifies where this program can be called from, e.g. ~/.xinitrc, although this was not actually used in resolving the issue.]

He also added, "I didn't check to find exactly what those other programs and config files are called, but the mischievous file will be somewhere in the home directory."

Great to have it sorted out, even if I only partially understand how it was done.

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#7

Thanks for getting back to us with that. Sometimes even just a tiny clue helps people to know where to start looking or helps confirm what they may have been told elsewhere. The details you gave are even more likely to be helpful if someone has the same problem in the future, you gave plenty of info there :))

Thanks and regards from
Tom :)

Revision history for this message
martron (imartron) said : 		#8

I was struggling with this problem too. Opening the gnome display settings and using that to set my monitor up to 1680x1050 was what I needed. It is very annoying that xorg seems to be getting ignored.

I couldn't find any (hidden) file in my home directory that seemed to reflect this change. Not sure where the setting was saved to.

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blackest_knight (blackest-knight) said : 		#9

sounds very much like my nvidia problem nvidia-settings would set a 1440x900 screen for me but on next boot would revert to 640x480 the answer was to use the other screen resolution manager (answer no to the question in the dialog (preferences-> Display)
"It appears that your graphics driver does not support the necessary extensions to use this tool. Do you want to use your graphics driver vendor's tool instead"

The nvidia settings would not 'stick' even when launched as root (although that solves the permissions issue).

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#10

Hi :)

Have you been able to try the new Ubuntu 10.04 before it gets officially released?
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/testing/lucid/beta2
Trying it as a LiveCd or as an extra dual/multi-boot would be ideal. Developers and everyone are keen to try to iron out any problems before 10.04 gets officially released so you might find faster & more effective answers to your bug reports which would make 10.04 work better on your system for you

Thanks and regards from
Tom :)

Revision history for this message
kiriath-arba (pjrobinson-kol-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#11

The nvidia issue that prompted this thread occurred on a friend's machine and I'm not sure if there'll be an opportunity to test out the Lucid beta version just at the moment.

I have however tried the Live CD on my own machine. The display settings were all taken care of flawlessly and it generally performed well. There was an issue with the sound which has been reported here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/562683

Regards
Peter

Revision history for this message
Tom (tom6) said : 		#12

Hi :)

Thanks for giving the feedback in here and also for trying it on your own machine. It is not compulsory that people try it but i thought you might be interested so i am glad you have already taken the chance to try it before official release.

I'm not looking forwards to the buttons being the wrong way around but i gather it's fairly easy to change and i even have a link for that somewhere.

Thanks, good luck and regards from
Tom :)