fc7 problem with xorg configuration

[Joe Smith]

I only ran into one small glitch with fc7 install: the xorg 
configuration failed to detect my monitor, falling back to the generic 
VGA display. This meant the top display resolution was 1024x768.

Trying to run system-config-display was not helping either: even if I 
picked my monitor from the list, the xorg.conf was not being written to 
/etc/X11 (or anywhere else that I could find). Only if I deleted the 
/etc/X11/xorg.conf could I get a file there, and it seemed to be 
incomplete: it had no "Screen" section at the end listing the available 
resolutions.

Finally I ran it under ~root as:
# system-config-display -o xorg.conf --reconfig

and got a file I could use.

I depend on the Ctrl+Alt+{plus,minus} function to switch resolutions, 
but the default xorg.conf output has always produced a half-dozen or 
more modes, which is too many to be of any practical use but I can 
easily reduce this to the three or four I need. When the xorg.conf has 
no Screen section, it's of no use to me.

So my questions are:
1) Shouldn't Anaconda/system-config-display detect my monitor?
2) Is the Screen section being deprecated?
3) If so, then is there an easier way to get my required configuration?

I mean, it would sweet if running system-config-display was all I needed 
to do.

<Joe

[Rahul Sundaram]

Joe Smith wrote:

>  
>  So my questions are:
>  1) Shouldn't Anaconda/system-config-display detect my monitor? 
Yes. File a bug report against your Xorg driver in 
http://bugzilla.redhat.com if it doesn't.

>  2) Is the Screen section being deprecated? 
Yes. The goal is to auto detect everything and only use the 
configuration file for user specific customizations

>  3) If so, then is there an easier way to get my required
> configuration?
>  I mean, it would sweet if running system-config-display was all I needed 
>  to do. 
It wouldn't be even better if no configuration tools were required.

Rahul

[Tony Nelson]

At 3:36 AM +0530 6/7/07, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Joe Smith wrote:
>
> >
> > So my questions are:
> > 1) Shouldn't Anaconda/system-config-display detect my monitor?
>
> Yes. File a bug report against your Xorg driver in
> http://bugzilla.redhat.com if it doesn't.
>
> > 2) Is the Screen section being deprecated?
>
> Yes. The goal is to auto detect everything and only use the
> configuration file for user specific customizations
>
> > 3) If so, then is there an easier way to get my required configuration?
> > I mean, it would sweet if running system-config-display was all I needed
> > to do.
>
> It wouldn't be even better if no configuration tools were required. 
Hard to do in his case, as the system would have to read his mind to know
which three or four resolutions he wants to keep:

At 1:47 PM -0400 6/6/07, Joe Smith wrote:
 ...
> I depend on the Ctrl+Alt+{plus,minus} function to switch resolutions,
> but the default xorg.conf output has always produced a half-dozen or
> more modes, which is too many to be of any practical use but I can
> easily reduce this to the three or four I need. When the xorg.conf has
> no Screen section, it's of no use to me. 
 ...
-- 
____________________________________________________________________
TonyN.:'                       <mailto:[e-mail]>
      '                              <http://www.georgeanelson.com/>

[Rahul Sundaram]

Tony Nelson wrote:
>  At 3:36 AM +0530 6/7/07, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> > Joe Smith wrote:
> >
> >> So my questions are:
> >> 1) Shouldn't Anaconda/system-config-display detect my monitor?
> > Yes. File a bug report against your Xorg driver in
> > http://bugzilla.redhat.com if it doesn't.
> >
> >> 2) Is the Screen section being deprecated?
> > Yes. The goal is to auto detect everything and only use the
> > configuration file for user specific customizations
> >
> >> 3) If so, then is there an easier way to get my required configuration?
> >> I mean, it would sweet if running system-config-display was all I needed
> >> to do.
> > It wouldn't be even better if no configuration tools were required.
>  
>  Hard to do in his case, as the system would have to read his mind to know
>  which three or four resolutions he wants to keep: 
See #2.

Rahul

[Joe Smith]

Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>  ... Yes. File a bug report against your Xorg driver ... 
Will do.

> > 2) Is the Screen section being deprecated?
>  
>  Yes. The goal is to auto detect everything and only use the 
>  configuration file for user specific customizations
>  ...
>  It wouldn't be even better if no configuration tools were required. 
Hmm. It's a fine goal, but until computers are intelligent and 
telepathic it can't happen.

Having both a (complete!) text config file and a robust config tool is a 
very valuable feature, allowing for unforseen configurations and a 
simple fallback when the config tool fails. I feel strongly that it 
would be a Bad Thing if xorg.conf (or some kind of text config) is 
deprecated.

It saved my install once I got past the problems.

<Joe

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Wed, Jun 06, 2007 at 13:47:20 -0400,
  Joe Smith <jes(a)martnet.com&gt; wrote:
>  
>  So my questions are:
>  1) Shouldn't Anaconda/system-config-display detect my monitor? 
There is a bug with the radeon driver that can cause this problem.

>  2) Is the Screen section being deprecated?
>  3) If so, then is there an easier way to get my required configuration?
>  
>  I mean, it would sweet if running system-config-display was all I needed 
>  to do. 
I don't like the new system right now. I had some issues because the
config file seems to only get set for the current color depth and if you
switch color depth you may need to boot to level 3 to fix things.
The display page doesn't use the color depth and resolution together. So
it allows you to pick combinations that will cause problems. (Though this
might really be due to missing data in the xorg.conf file for a color
depth.)
Also when you change your display hardware (after it wasn't detected) it
doesn't use the resolution displayed in the setup screen. I suspect that
you might have to touch something on that screen, but haven't tried that
yet.
Another anoying thing, is that when it knows what the monitor is, it doesn't
seem to take into account either the native resolution of the display or
the aspect ratio when picking which resolution to use by default. It seems
to pick whatever has the most pixels. I would expect the native aspect
ratio to be preferred as well as not exceeding the native resolution in
either dimension by default.