double screen

[James Tappin]

On Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:57:05 +1800
Chris Mohler <cr33dog at gmail.com> wrote:

CM> On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 2:00 PM, Stanford Evans
CM> <bobnlou at verizon.net> wrote:
CM> > I am  a complete newbie, and just installed v. 8.1. Somehow, in my
CM> > wanderings, I managed
CM> > to come up  with a double screen--a second screen up about 1/3 of
CM> > the screen, taking up
CM> > space needed to do any work. I would appreciate any info on how to
CM> > remove this, short of
CM> > a re-installation, or if that is required, indicate thus.  Thank
CM> > you. Bob
CM> 
CM> Reboot - at the GRUB screen, choose the latest "Recovery" option.
CM> After a little while you should see a prompt for an action - choose
CM> "Fix X Server" (or something to that effect), and once that
CM> finishes, select "Continue Booting".
CM> 
CM> Alternatively, open a terminal and do:
CM> sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf_OLD
CM> 
CM> Then logout and log back in.

Is this a laptop? Unfortunately some laptops (and also on occasions
monitors connected via KVM switches) don't correctly return the screen's
capabilities and in this case X will start up in a low resolution mode
that then gets wrapped on the screen. In this case "Fixing the X server"
or removing xorg.conf won't help, the only solution that I am aware of
the will always work is to get a live CD from an older version (e.g. Gutsy)
boot that, copy the xorg.conf file to a USB drive, reboot with 8.10 and
copy the xorg.conf from the USB drive to /etc/X11/.

\begin{rant}
The fully automatic configuration of X in recent versions of xorg is
very nice, but there really does need to be a convenient way to override
it manually for brain-dead hardware.
\end{rant}

-- 
+------------------------+-------------------------------+---------+
| James Tappin           | School of Physics & Astronomy |  O__    |
| sjt at star.sr.bham.ac.uk | University of Birmingham      | --  \/` |
| Ph: 0121-414-6462. Fax: 0121-414-3722                  |         |
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