How do I Confingure Monitior settings in Fedora?

[orion78]

I just recently installed Fedora and I am having an issue with booting past grub. My monitor seems to go blank..like it's out of range or something. I have a older monitor, it is a MAG 510v2 and was hoping that someone could over me some advice as to what I can do so that I can actually get past grub.




.: Any advice is better than No advice.

[Void Main]

at the GRUB prompt press "a" and add the word "single" to the boot line. That should bring your system up in single user mode (no X) and allow you to fix your X configuration. If you don't know how to do that, at least let me know if it does come up all the way to a text based login so I know if it is really an X configuration problem or something else.

[orion78]

If I had nothing at all to the boot line it trys to load and then the monitor clicks off and goes black, but if I had init 3 to the boot line, I can get into to root. I can also get into view my XF86config file to check monitor settings, but then too I have no clue as to what to do next. It finds my monitor as mag 510v2 and the proper horiozontal sync and vertical refresh rate and the modes listed are "1026x768" "800x600" "640x480". It's got my generic 3-button mouse settings and it shows my nvidia drivers. I have an nvidia gefore 2.

But really the only way for me to login to root is by adding init 3 to the boot line.



.: When adding single to the boot line it goes through the checks [ok] etc. all the way down to enabling swap space that checks [ok] and the next line is sh-2.05# and then it hangs.

[Void Main]

I also have a GeForce 2 card which might make this easier. Do you have the nVidia drivers installed? If so hopefully not the newest ones.

[orion78]

Well I just installed Fedora and I don't have that computer on the network yet so truthfully I haven't installed any drivers. I just let fedora automatically caonfigure all my hardware...




.: Laugh if you will but I was thinking there wasl already drivers for nvidia that came with fedora and they automatically got installed.. if not maybe that is my issue...may effecting the monitor as well.


.: just doulbe checked and it says that I have the nv drivers installed for the video card

[Void Main]

Yes, Fedora comes with generic nVidia drivers that will work but they are not accelerated drivers. GL 3d games and other GL apps will be slow without the ones you download from nVidia however that surely is not the problem you are having. You are definitely having incorrect monitor settings problems. I would make a backup copy of your /etc/X11/XF86Config file and then run redhat-config-xfree86.

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linu ... /ch-x.html

[orion78]

I am really having a hard time understand how to run the Xconfiguration tool. I was wondering or thinking I should say, if I went into the XF86ConFig file that maybe I could change the setting for my moitor and just make it ay a generic VGA monitor....maybe.

[Void Main]

It's probably trying to use a refresh or sync range higher than what your monitor is capable of. According to /usr/share/hwdata/MonitorsDB the MAG510V2 should have a HorizSync of 30.0-50.0 and the VertRefresh is 50.0-100.0. You could verify that is what your config has. You might also drop out one of the higher resolutions or move it from the front of the line to the end of the line. Put something like "800x600" or "1024x768" first in the Modes list in case you have something higher, just to see if you can get it up.

[orion78]

I checked to make sure that all the settings were right and they do seem to be.....

Code: Select all

 Section "Monitor"
                 Identifier        "Monitor0"
                 VendorName  "Monitor Vender"
                 ModelName    "MAG 510v2"
                 DisplaySize     270              200
                 HorizSync       30.0 - 50.0
                 VertRefresh    50.0 - 100.0
                 Option            "dpms"
EndSection

These are the actual monitor settings.

.:

[Void Main]

What do your Modes lines say? Should have all your resolutions in them. Would look something like this:

Code: Select all

                Modes    "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"


There should be one for each color depth. And what is your default color depth set to (DefaultDepth)? If the mode line starts with a really high resolution, try putting a lower one as the first one in the list. Also try a lower color depth just to see if that might be causing it (maybe it detected more video RAM than you actually have).

[orion78]

My modes line reads exzctly what you said it should look like.



.: UPDATE :. Without being able to figure out why my monitor would not work, I cam to the conclusion that it was time for a bew monitor, so I plugged in a 19' lCD and works like a dream without changing anything. THank you so much for all your help!

[caveman]

I had a similiar problem installing Fedora on an "upgraded" system
with a fairly new monitor.

Had to install using text. But on reboot the system just looked hung
and the monitor was switched off..
I could get in using ssh - so it seemed like the display.
Went into recovery mode and started vnc for root on boot up.
It still looked hung and the monitor went off - but I could get in using vnc.
Booting in single user or init 3 - the system was fine, but startx
gave me the same problem.
(somewhere in between fooling around I tried RH ES 2.1 - same result)

I then installed an old AGP card that was lying around - and that seems
to have solved the problem. Apparently it just couldn't see the onboard
vga adapter properly and tried to switch to the AGP slot.
There's nothing in the bios that I could see
that could interfere and try and auto switch to the AGP slot.

Am still going through some other forums to see if someone else had
the same problem.

[orion78]

You are exactly right, that was the very same problems I was having. I could get in using init 3 but that was the only way. I also installed fedora using text only. I was dissapointed I tell you none the least because it came down to not being able to see what was going on when I knew that everything was setup properly. I unfortunately never tried another videio card because I didn't have one.

About a year ago I bought this LCD and and about a month ago it stopped working when I moved my mouse so I thought that I blew the lamp or something so taking a shot in the dark I plugged it in and it worked just perfect. I am very grateful for that otherwise I was planning on maybe trying another distro. I spent literally two days reading and talking in IRC to try and figure out what would make a monitor just black out like that. I looked in the XF86Config file and everything to everyone's believe said it looked fine and they too were just as baffled.

I have to admit it was a 10 year old MAG innovision monitor but I hate to even utter the words, (worked fine for Windoze). I made the decision to go to Linux because I had nothing that was tying me to Windoze and I must say honestly I am very much happen with my decision despite a few minor bugs here and there but I know in time they will be worked out.

I wish everyone the best of luck with anyone that should encounter the same problem and maybe there will be another fix to this problem.

.: I also tried to change the monitor type in XF86Config to a generic monitor setting at the lowest res and that too did no justice!!