If you have a device that’s not supported in the bios and you don’t have the driver, you may not be able to get X working at all. Failure looks like anything from random streaking lines and jibberish to just a plain black screen.

I have a laptop with 1440×900 native resolution. The vesa driver detects this preference and tries to use it as the virtual resolution, but it’s not working.

1. Xorg -configure to get a plain-jane xorg.conf
2. Move /root/xorg.conf.new to /etc/X11/xorg.conf
3. Use cvt to generate a failsafe modeline.
4. Add the modeline to the xorg.conf monitor section.
5. Add the display subsection with the failsafe virtual size.
6. Reboot.

The first thing you should do is backup whatever xorg.conf you’re currently using. I usually put a copy in /opt just for safe keeping.

As root (be root for all the commands), run Xorg -configure. This will give you a fresh copy with just the basics. Move it to /etc/X11/ as xorg.conf.

Xorg -configure

Now run “cvt 1024 768″ to spit out a modeline setting. Redirect this to xorg.conf.

cvt 1024 768 >> /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Move the modeline into the Monitor section.

Section "Monitor" Identifier "Monitor0" Modeline "1024x768_60.00 63.50 1024 1072 1176 1328 768 771 775 798 -hsync +vsync EndSection

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Section "Monitor"     Identifier "Monitor0"     Modeline "1024x768_60.00 63.50 1024 1072 1176 1328 768 771 775 798 -hsync +vsync EndSection

Now create a Subsection in the Screen section with the virtual size of 1024×768 and reboot.

Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen0" Device "Card0" Monitor "Monitor0" SubSection "Display" Depth 16 Virtual 1024 768 EndSubSection SubSection "Display" Depth 24 Virtual 1024 768 EndSubSection EndSection

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Section "Screen"     Identifier "Screen0"     Device "Card0"     Monitor "Monitor0"     SubSection "Display"         Depth 16         Virtual 1024 768     EndSubSection     SubSection "Display"         Depth 24         Virtual 1024 768     EndSubSection EndSection

Posted on October 16th, by admica in howto, Linux.

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configure display modeline x Xorg xorg.conf