Run Comand Dialogue 'Freezes'

[Rod Joyce]

On Monday 10 September 2007 17:03:52 Tim Johnson wrote:
> On Sunday 09 September 2007, Rod Joyce wrote:
> > Have you tried killing the window from Ksysguard or Konsole?
> > Rod
>
> No, but that would probably work. As for Neil's comment:
> I just realized that some combinations of ctrl-alt-escape don't
> work, but found one that does.
> However, it gets worse. If I kill the dialogue, the next instance doesn't
> work either. And now, if I log out, instead of getting kdm, I get a black
> screen - not a console and must do a hard reboot.
>
> I had this same problem when I first installed kubuntu, and I was informed
> that it is related to a known bug that can be 'fixed' by an edit in
> xorg.conf. I made that edit but :-( I don't remember what it was that was
> changed.
>
> Now that I have installed a new monitor and kubuntu has rewritten
> xorg.conf, I'm beginning to suspect that the same edit is needed.
>
> Tim

Ah Ha! 
I had problems after my old CRT monitor died last month. I replaced it with a 
TFT one with a manufacturer's recommended resolution of 1280x1024 at 60MHz and 
found that 
1) sometimes the picture would freeze
2) no matter what resolution I chose in KDE System Settings -> Monitor & 
Display, the system would reset itself to 640x480 every time the computer 
booted so I could only see a quarter of the desktop at a time
3) only the default user (me) had a picture, any other user (the rest of the 
family who rapidly got very fed up) had a desktop that was possibly at 
1280x1024 but so full of snow and ghost images that nothing worked
4) my pc didn't take any notice of ctrl-alt-escape
5) when booting from the live/install DVD the resolution I wanted (and 
recommended by he manufacturer) 1280x1024 was selected and ran faultlessly

In the end I went into console mode on booting and copied the xorg.conf file 
from the live DVD to /etc/X11/. This was a partially satisfactory solution, 
as it was still unstable at times, the resolutions  in System Settings-> 
Monitor and Display were inaccurate and I couldn't make any permanent changes 
that way.

I finally cured the problem by following the hint in xorg.conf itself to run 
sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg
This gave me a stable 1024x768 desktop. I couldn't and still can't persuade 
the package configurator to let me enter any resolution at all other than the 
three it preselects from 1024x768 downwards so I edited xorg.conf manually. 
The relevant sections are 
Section "Monitor"
  identifier "Generic Monitor"
  vendorname "Generic"
  modelname "1280x1024 @ 60 Hz"
  HorizSync 31.5-64.3
  VertRefresh 50-70
  modeline  "640x480 at 60" 25.2 640 656 752 800 480 490 492 525 -vsync -hsync
  modeline  "800x600 at 56" 36.0 800 824 896 1024 600 601 603 625 +hsync +vsync
  modeline  "800x600 at 60" 40.0 800 840 968 1056 600 601 605 628 +hsync +vsync
  modeline  "1024x768 at 70" 75.0 1024 1048 1184 1328 768 771 777 
806 -vsync -hsync
  modeline  "1024x768 at 60" 65.0 1024 1048 1184 1344 768 771 777 
806 -vsync -hsync
  modeline  "1280x960 at 60" 102.1 1280 1360 1496 1712 960 961 964 994 -hsync 
+vsync
  modeline  "1280x1024 at 60" 108.0 1280 1328 1440 1688 1024 1025 1028 1066 
+hsync +vsync
  gamma 1.0
EndSection

Section "Screen"
  Identifier "Default Screen"
  Device "Generic Video Card"
  Monitor "Generic Monitor"
  DefaultDepth 24
  SubSection "Display"
    depth 24
    virtual 1280 1024
    
modes "1280x1024 at 60" "1280x960 at 60" "1024x768 at 60" "1024x768 at 70" "800x600 at 60" "800x600 at 56" "640x480 at 60"
  EndSubSection
EndSection

and 

Section "screen" # 
  identifier "screen1"
  device "device1"
  defaultdepth 24
  monitor "monitor1"
EndSection

Why this should work, I do not know, but it does.

I bought the monitor from the shop round the corner, it was a bargain, and I'm 
pleased with it, but it's an I-Inc and the only specs I could find were in 
Chinese...

Rod