Public bug reported:
A trial installation of 7.04 beta suggests that there may still be a
problem with the configuration of X during installation. My hardware
consists of a Tyan Thunder K8W board with 2 x Opteron 250s 4Gb RAM and
an XFX7800GS [AGP] Graphics Card coupled with a Samsung 214T 21"
[1600x1200] TFT LCD Monitor.
After the post-installation reboot, GNOME [ie X] comes back with
resolution set to 1024x768.
Posts on the forums suggested that I try
dpkg-reconfigure ...
which I did, taking best educated guesses at the questions asked. When
this failed I resorted to a technique that has worked in the past, which
has been to manually hack xorg.conf, adding extra resolution parameters
as shown below :-
This is the default xorg.conf setting :-
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA Default Card"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection
and this is my hacked version of the file...
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA Default Card"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
Modes "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864"
"1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
Modes "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864"
"1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864"
"1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864"
"1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864"
"1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864"
"1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection
In the case of Feisty, I then restarted X and expected to see my monitor
come back at 1600x1200 [ie native] resolution. It didn't. I went ahead
and applied all the available updates and that solved the problem. I
mention this only as this is the first distro [since Breezy] where I've
found it necessary to patch before upscaling X to 1600x1200 native res
for my monitor.
I posted this as a comment in the general discussion forum, here
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=400128
and had a response from "ssam" suggesting this was worth raising here,
which I'm happy to do. In passing, one further and potentially useful
point worth noting. Prior to upgrading to ubuntu, I had been a Mandrake
user since about Mandrake 7.0 and have always been impressed with
Mandrake's ability to detect and configure hardware properly. For
example, from at least Mandrake 2005LE, the distro has correctly
configured itself for my Monitor [in some releases I was able to select
from a list] but was always able to correctly detect my nVidia graphics
card.
When Mandriva spotted an nVidia card, it also then automatically applied
the appropriate binary drivers and configured glx to work with X, with
[in my experience] 100% success.
I'm not suggesting that we would want to go quite that far with ubuntu,
but as this "bug" posting is effectively a wish-list item, one really
nice option would be to see the installer detect an nVidia card and then
give the user a prompt that says, "Installer has detected an nVidia card
for which proprietary drivers exist. Would you like this installed?" and
give the user the choice... That would be a nice and practical way to
keep a fully FOSS machine for those who want one, but give others the
option for specialist drivers in a way that clearly shows them what is
being done to their build... Just a thought.
As my original posting to the forum observed, ubuntu is a terrific distro that
goes from strength to strength.
It would be nice if someone could look at and resolve this annoying
little problem, especially as I'm keen to see ubuntu get all the basics
right before attempting the more adventurous things!
Thanks in advance
C
** Affects: Ubuntu
Importance: Undecided
Status: Unconfirmed
--
7.04 Beta: X Config Failure at Installation
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/105106
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