[SOLVED] Screen Resolution Problem

[nARMstrong20]

Hey all,
I'm having problems with a black screen after trying to boot normally from a FAT32 USB drive with the Porteus Live ISO. There will be the usual text, ending with something along of the lines of "Porteus is ready to boot", but then the screen will turn off. Using the "nomodeset" parameter allows it to boot, but only in 800x600 resolution.
I built my Porteus ISO using the wizard using the following options:
32 bit
Default (No EFI)
GUI Boot Mode
XFCE Desktop
Factory Timezone
UTC Support
English (US) Keyboard
Left sound volume as is, 75%
Didn't use Advanced options
Opera browser
LibreOffice
No Dev tools
Open Source Graphics
No Print Support

My hardware is an HP 110-1116NR netbook, and the GPU (which I think may be the problem) is an Intel Mobile Intel 945GSE Express, which I believe uses Intel GMA 950 Drivers or something like that. I've encountered this problem before with distros like Ubuntu, although not with others like Zorin, Chromixium and Puppy. I haven't spent a lot of time fixing the problems if they happen, usually I just move on, but with the way Porteus has been running so far I REALLY want to get the graphics going. Any help would really be appreciated. Thanks guys!

EDIT: If it helps, my display resolution is 1024x600.

[Bogomips]

Hi

Welcome to Porteus. If you are worried about the build, try a bog-standard xfce iso: http://dl.porteus.org/i486/current/Port ... 1-i486.iso

[nARMstrong20]

I actually didn't think it was the build at all. I tried the ISO in the link you sent, and the result was, unfortunately the same. Looks like it's going to load, and then black screen. I was suspecting it more as a driver problem. Any ideas?

[francois]

Once in text mode, please provide us with the output of xrandr command. Also, you can have a look at the following post:
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=3203

[nARMstrong20]

Well, here's the odd thing. Attempting to boot into text mode (from the bootloader) also ends up in a black screen. Again it took the "nomodeset" command to get it to display anything on the screen at all, and because of that the xrandr command (as root) returns "Can't open display". When in GUI mode (on nomodeset), all the resolution values are 800 x 600)

EDIT: I don't know how much this will help, but I booted into Zorin, which has working graphics, and entered xrandr into the terminal. Here's the output:
[my username]@zorin-hp:~$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1024 x 600, maximum 32767 x 32767
LVDS1 connected primary 1024x600+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 190mm x 110mm
1024x600 60.0*+
800x600 60.3 56.2
640x480 59.9
VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VIRTUAL1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
[my username]@zorin-hp:~$
Just in case it wasn't clear, I thought I'd just blot out my username, replacing it with [my username]

[sunnysideofthesun]

When I was setting bigger resolutions for display of virtual machine using vga=### boot option it was going black or just hang too after changing window size, but I thought it was VM's bug. Seems like it wasn't.
You can try your luck adding vga=### to strings which start with APPEND in porteus.cfg file
http://pierre.baudu.in/other/grub.vga.modes.html
The only that was always taking me up to login prompt in Text mode was vga=788.
Or you can try option vga=ask and choose any you like.
Maybe using option vga_detect will kick some gears in Porteus engine even if your notebook does not have nVidia or AMD graphics?

[francois]

Before xrandr, try sunny's proposition to begin with.
And I am sure phppro is worth a try.

[nARMstrong20]

Unfortunately, my resolution is 1024x600, but I can't seem to find the VGA code for that. Inputting vga=ask gives me a list of resolutions, but none of them above 800x600, and none that I have tried work, although I haven't tried them all yet. As I mentioned in my first post, I have an HP, so unfortunately Alt+F8, then Alt+F2 doesn't work.
Here's a thing that might be of interest, though. Despite being black-screened, my Wifi hardware switch turns blue, which to me indicates that at least some of Porteus is running past the black screen. However, I've tried typing certain things (root, then toor (that's the default password, right?), then sudo reboot and then toor again just in case of a password prompt), but nothing happens, which to me indicates that either keyboard input is disabled, or I'm missing something.

[francois]

Follow this example, but using your desired resolution (i.e. 1024 x 600) from a thread were I involved a few years ago:
http://old.slax.org/forum.php?action=vi ... ostid37773

Here the first command gtf is to generate some infos that you will be using the following xrandr --newmode and xrandr --admode commands

EXAMPLE:

Code: Select all

Set up 1400x900 manually by xrandr, but it says maximum allowed resolution is 1024x1024. 
root@slax:~# gtf 1400 900 60
# 1400x900 @ 60.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 55.92 kHz; pclk: 104.23 MHz

Modeline "1400x900_60.00" 104.23 1400 1480 1632 186v4 900 901 904 932 -HSync +Vsync
root@slax:~# xrandr --newmode "1400x900_60.00" 104.23 1400 1480 1632 1864 900 901 904 932 -HSync +Vsync
root@slax:~# xrandr --addmode VGA "1400x900_60.00"
root@slax:~# xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1024 x 768, maximum 1024 x 1024
VGA connected 1024x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm
1024x768 60.0*
800x600 60.3
640x480 59.9
1400x900_60.00 60.0
LVDS connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
800x480 60.6 +
640x480 85.0 72.8 75.0 59.9
720x400 85.0
640x400 85.1
640x350 85.1
TV disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
root@slax:~# xrandr -display :0.0 --output VGA --mode 1400x900_60.00
xrandr: screen cannot be larger than 1024x1024 (desired size 1400x900)

xrandr is really robust.

[sunnysideofthesun]

If kernel can't detect anything greater than 800x600 then probably my posting below won't help too, but I'll leave it there for historical purpose.
Long long time ago in a forum far far away users of another small distros were discussing setting up resolution 1024x600.
They tried to use vga=577. Wnen it failed, they resorted to hacking into video bios with utility named 915resolution
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=6871.15
The only slackware version of 915resolution I found is for Slackware 12, so it's bit old (I don't know if it will work at all), but if you won't success even with xrandr, you might want to try it too.
http://slackbuilds.org/repository/12.2/ ... esolution/
Designed specially for Intel graphics.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
@phh below: yeah, probably Intel 945GSE which nARMstrong20 has is beyond Intel 945G supported by 915resolution.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
@nARMstrong20: if you are terribly scared (hope it's not contagious) of losing installed to usb stick live distro after setting wrong vga mode, you may add few entries to boot menu by copying and renaming them in porteus.cfg file. Say, copy of Text mode renamed to Emergency, for example, without vga options.
Also, if you can get to graphic desktop at least in 800x600 mode and if you can use Start->Settings->Display control panel, then you may try to manually edit ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/displays.xml as suggested here http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions ... ost3611256

[nARMstrong20]

Alright, here's an update:
sunny's idea looked promising, this is a very old laptop so busting the BIOS would have been the end of the world so I gave it a shot. Unfortunately some of the files necessary to build the package appear to be no longer available. (The instructions gave a link to download files from, and the site has since shut down.) I'll look at the other options, but this is looking more and more bleak. I'm afraid 800x600 won't be very good for me, considering that I have a small screen, and it was diffcult enough to make a Porteus save file, as the window cut off much of the options, and I couldn't resize it.

EDIT:[/] Another update: I tried the other suggestion posted of editing display.xml, however, that file does not appear to exist. I suspect it's one of the products of nomodeset. Going to the display menu gives no other options except "default", which is locked at 800x600, 0.0Hz refresh rate, and "None" for rotation and reflection.

Also, while noodling around a bit I discovered that the switching tty keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Alt+F8, then Ctrl+Alt+F2) DOES indeed work in GUI mode, however, doing it while the screen is black seems to do nothing.

[francois]

Great. So you are pinning down the possible solutions. What about xrandr?

[nARMstrong20]

Funny, I was about add the xrandr part to the old post, but anyways: When doing the "newmode" command, I'm getting this:

"xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default."

How does one fix that? I'm about to go Google it, but if anyone can post their solutions, that would be awesome.

EDIT: Here's the terminal copy-paste
root@porteus:~# gtf 1024 600 60

# 1024x600 @ 60.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 37.32 kHz; pclk: 48.96 MHz
Modeline "1024x600_60.00" 48.96 1024 1064 1168 1312 600 601 604 622 -HSync +Vsync
root@porteus:~# xrandr --newmode "1024x600_60.00" 48.96 1024 1064 1168 1312 600 601 604 622 -HSync +Vsync
xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default

[francois]

What is the output of xrandr alone (this is mine):

Code: Select all

root@porteus:~# xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 2806 x 900, maximum 32767 x 32767
LVDS1 connected primary 1366x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm
   1366x768      60.20*+
   1024x768      60.00  
   800x600       60.32    56.25  
   640x480       59.94  
VGA1 connected 1440x900+1366+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 410mm x 256mm
   1440x900      59.89*+
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02  
   1280x960      60.00  
   1152x864      75.00  
   1024x768      85.00    75.08    70.07    60.00  
   832x624       74.55  
   800x600       85.06    72.19    75.00    60.32    56.25  
   640x480       85.01    75.00    72.81    66.67    60.00  
   720x400       70.08  
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VIRTUAL1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
root@porteus:~# 

[sunnysideofthesun]

If kernel used in Porteus supports "nomodeset" option, then probably it supports KMS in general.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ke ... de_setting
Then for Intel 945GSE you could use i915.modeset=1 boot option as described here http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.fr ... intel/2418
But unfortunatelly I don't see in XFCE folder /sys/module/i915.

<some time of googling and lurking in /lib/modules/porteus-3.17.4 passed>

Hey, wait a second, /lib/modules/porteus-3.17.4/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/i915.ko is present, so it's theoretically possible. I have no Intel graphics hardware to check.

<own post editing disease gets worse...>
No one ever reads FAQ, but why not to tell how to ENABLE KMS for Intel or other graphics if one doesn't use builds of proprietary graphic drivers as separate .xzm modules?
http://www.porteus.org/faq.html#six

Just a note mostly to myself after all this searching. This arch linux wiki appears to be very informative source. KMS, Intel graphics handling (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel_graphics , including xrandr methods suggested by francois from the start), working with other graphic chipsets etc.
And when I finally got my hands on someone elses Compaq 610 with Intel 965GM and tried Porteus there it was no fun at all because everything worked with and without i915.modeset=1 option on highest resolution and /sys/module/i915 was full of files both ways. Means modesetting works automatically. So good luck with xrandr.