F14: what replaces s-c-d?

John M Cavallo johnc0102 at verizon.net
Sun Nov 14 15:46:16 UTC 2010


On Wednesday, November 10, 2010 12:09:33 pm you wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-11-10 at 16:57 +0000, Beartooth wrote:
> > 	By "s-c-d" I mean to abbreviate "system-config-display."
> > 	
> > 	I've been running three, sometimes four PCs, behind  a series of
> > 
> > KVM switches, against an HP w2207h monitor, which is a flat panel
> > 1680x1050, for some years and several Fedora releases.
> > 
> > 	Fedora's releases have always had troubles; as, I think, would
> > 
> > any other OS, since the PCs are generally two to seven years old: at
> > least one of them was built before any such resolution as 1680x1050 had
> > been invented. (The monitor can compensate down to 1280x1024, or a little
> > farther -- if the PC can send that, the monitor can stretch it to fit.)
> > 
> > 	The troubles have gotten better but are not quite clear gone.
> > 
> > They've gotten down to this: on some but not all PCs, the cursor showing
> > on the screen is a couple millimeters higher than the mouse thinks; and
> > some displays' windows cannot be sized nor moved so as to make their
> > bottom lines clickable, or even visible.
> > 
> > 	The big hammer used to be to take each PC in turn out from behind
> > 
> > the KVM switch, connect it alone directly to the keyboard, mouse, and
> > monitor; and use system-config-display.
> > 
> > 	That would get everything close enough for the monitor to be able
> > 
> > to handle the difference.
> > 
> > 	But now I get :
> > [root at Hbsk1 ~]# system-config-display
> > Command not found.
> > 
> > 	Telling yum to install it fails.
> > 
> > [root at Hbsk1 ~]# yum install system-config-*
> > 
> > finds what I have, and installs a lot more; but system-config-display is
> > not among them.
> > 
> > 	What can I use? This constantly clicking on the wrong place is
> > 
> > beginning to resemble the classic water torture ....
> 
> Not quite as gui-friendly, but you can get X itself to generate a
> xorg.conf configuration file:
> 
>  X -configure :1 # the :1 avoids conflicts with existing X server if any
> 
> You can review /root/xorg.conf.new to see if the options are to your
> liking. To install it:
> 
>  mv /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
> 
> -Chris

Another user-surley method is to use xrandr. You can experiment with it from 
the command line, and then install it in a file in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/.

I have two monitors, one of which doesn't report the EDID, and I wanted to use 
them in a side by side. By runn ing xrandr from the command line, I was able 
to determine the names of the two devices. I used the --addmode option to add 
a new size option for the ancient monitor, and the --output option to use it. 
I kept playing around with it until I got what I wanted. I was then able to 
create an executable file, 99-xrandr, in the above directory containing:

      #!/bin/bash

      xrandr --addmode VGA-0 1280x1024
      xrandr --output DVI-0 --mode 1680x1050
      xrandr --output VGA-0 --mode 1280x1024 --right-of DVI-0

In KDE you can put the file in a user's start up file area ~/.kde/Autostart, I 
am not familar with the location that gnome would want it.

In one system I had to use --newmode to create the 1280x1024 mode, but I don't 
have that file avaliable on this computer (also it was on Fedora 8).

- John.




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