dpkg-reconfigure not doing what I remember

[Chris G]

On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 12:26:16PM -0400, H.S. wrote:
> Stephen R Laniel wrote:
> > Used to be that when I did
> > 
> > sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
> > 
> > , I'd get a prompt asking me how much
> > detail I wanted in my X configuration.
> > I'd answer "high," and would then get
> > all sorts of lovely questions -- among
> > which was the resolution to which I
> > wanted to set my monitor/card.
> > 
> > Now I'm not getting these prompts. Which
> > is irritating, because somehow my
> > monitor/card just started displaying
> > things at 800x600 for mysterious
> > reasons.
> > 
> > Anyone know how to get to the
> > resolution-configuration screen?
> > 
> 
> Similar 'problem' in Debian. However, it is not really a problem.
> Apparently xorg does a better job of detecting your monitor than
> dpkg-reconf of xserver-xorg package. What ended up working for me was to
> let xorg make a new xorg.conf file by itself and it detected all the
> resolutions of my new monitor. To do this:
> 1. Go to a tty (CTRL+ALT+F1 for example) and use sudo for the following
> steps.
> 2. Rename your old xorg.conf file (in /etc/X11/) to something else (to
> keep a backup). Then xorg.conf should not exist.
> 3. Restart gdm (sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart). You should get a new
> xorg.conf file and good resolutions now.
> 4. If the above doesn't work, you have the backup of the earlier
> xorg.conf file. Use that and post there.
> 
But the problem is that Xorg *doesn't* always get the available
resolutions right, nor does it always default to a sensible resolution
even if it does detect all resolutions correctly.

Thus on my system (8.10 with a Dell 2001FP monitor) Xorg does
detect most of the useful resolutions but it defaults to 1152x864
which looks horrible on the Dell.  OK, I can select 1600x1200 in
System - Preferences -Screen Resolution but this doesn't set the
resolution for the GDM login screen, nor does it set it if you switch
to a different window manager.

-- 
Chris Green