[Bug 29950] Unwanted options in System>>Preferences>>Screen Resolution

[Alan Barnard]

Public bug report changed:
https://launchpad.net/malone/bugs/29950

Short description changed to:
    System>>Preferences>>Screen Resolution contains many unwanted
    resolution settings. These do not agree with the list specified
    during installation, the resolutions listed in xorg.conf, nor with
    those in Xorg.0.log - although there does seem to be some
    connection.
Description changed to:
    I have two computers: Silverbox, with an Nvidia GeForce4 graphics
    card and Nvidia drivers, dual boot, WinXP and Ubuntu 5.10 with k7
    kernel and quite a few additions and modifications including a hand-
    edited /etc/X11/xorg.conf; also, Blackbox with an old Number 9
    Imagine T2R card, k6 processor, running a fresh install of Ubuntu
    5.10 without updates.

    They share a 19inch CTX CRT monitor and a KVM switch - the monitor
    never gets identified, thus the need to edit xorg.conf..

    Both exhibit the same problem: the list of resolution options
    contains unwanted entries, some of which do not even work correctly.

    Looking now at Blackbox. I have looked in /var/log/Xorg.0.log as
    well as /etc/X11/xorg.conf and cannot find any meaningful
    relationship between their resolution entries, nor can I find any
    meaningful relationship between either of them and the drop-down
    preferences list. The top entry on the list is 1600x1200 which is
    used for the log-on screen (actually it barely works), this appears
    in xorg.conf but does not appear as a usable entry in Xorg.0.log -
    editing it out of xorg.conf makes it go away. 720x400 appears in
    xorg.conf but not on the drop-down list. But the drop-down list
    includes all sorts of extra resolutions such as 928x696 which is not
    found in xorg.conf  but is found in Xorg.0.log as a usable
    resolution.

    Silverbox and Blackbox are very different machines and the
    corresponding xorg.conf and Xorg.0.log file are very different. The
    problem, however, exists on both.

    When I installed Ubuntu on Silverbox, I was presented with a list of
    resolutions to choose from; I selected 4 - these are the ones listed
    in xorg.conf. In the case of Blackbox, no list was presented and
    xorg.conf contains several resolutions including those I wanted.

    I would like to get rid of this feature because it is not only
    confusing to users but it gives them the opportunity to make their
    system unusable.