Ubuntu 10.10 - can't change monitor resolution

[Charlie Gibbs]

Last week I got my wife a new laptop. It came with Windows 7; I tried
to live with it, but after a few days I got so infuriated that I wiped
it and installed Ubuntu 10.10. The exorcism went fairly smoothly, once
I tweaked the BIOS to look at the DVD-ROM first instead of the hard
disk.

However, I noticed that the display was distorted. It's the
same stretching that people inexplicably put up with when
watching 4:3 TV broadcasts on a 16:9 screen. When I selected
System->Preferences->Monitors, the monitor type came up "Unknown".
The resolution was set to 1024x768 (4:3), and there were no other
options.

The hardware is an ASUS K53U laptop with an ATI Radeon HD6320
chipset. The display has a resolution of 1366x768, so stretching
a 1024x768 display to fit results in the distortion I'm seeing.

I've done some googling on this, and played with xrandr in an
attempt to modify the setting. Any attempt to use xrandr results
in a "Failed to get size of gamma" message. (Exactly what does
that mean?)

Here's a sample session:

dgibbs@wilson2:~$ xrandr -q
xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
Screen 0: minimum 1024 x 768, current 1024 x 768, maximum 1024 x 768
default connected 1024x768+0+0 0mm x 0mm
1024x768 0.0*
dgibbs@wilson2:~$ cvt 1366 768
# 1368x768 59.88 Hz (CVT) hsync: 47.79 kHz; pclk: 85.25 MHz
Modeline "1368x768_60.00" 85.25 1368 1440 1576 1784 768 771 781 798 -hsync
+vsync
dgibbs@wilson2:~$ xrandr --newmode "1368x768_60.00" 85.25 1368 1440 1576 1784
768 771 781 798 -hsync -vsync
xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
dgibbs@wilson2:~$ xrandr -q
xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
Screen 0: minimum 1024 x 768, current 1024 x 768, maximum 1024 x 768
default connected 1024x768+0+0 0mm x 0mm
1024x768 0.0*
1368x768_60.00 (0x11b) 85.2MHz
h: width 1368 start 1440 end 1576 total 1784 skew 0 clock 47.8KHz
v: height 768 start 771 end 781 total 798 clock 59.9Hz
dgibbs@wilson2:~$ xrandr --addmode default "1368x768_60.00"
xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default

At this point, if I go to System->Preferences->Monitor, the type still
shows as "Unknown", but in addition to the existing "1042 x 768 (4:3)"
resolution option, there's a new entry "1368 x 768 (16:9)". When I
select this the refresh rate gets set to 60 Hz. Clicking "Apply",
though, brings up a message box: "The selected configuration for
displays could not be applied - could not set the configuration
for CRTC 262".

Here are the results of a few more commands:
dgibbs@wilson2:~$ lspci | grep VGA
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Device 9806
dgibbs@wilson2:~$ sudo lshw -C display
*-display UNCLAIMED
description: VGA compatible controller
product: ATI Technologies Inc
vendor: ATI Technologies Inc
physical id: 1
bus info: pci@0000:00:01.0
version: 00
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list
resources: memory:c0000000-cfffffff ioport:f000(size=256)
memory:feb00000-feb3ffff

Looking through /var/log/Xorg.0.log I found a lot of stuff for the
display adapter, including the following:

Modeline "1366x768"x0.0 69.30 1366 1382 1416 1466 768 770 776 788 -hsync -
vsync (47.3 kHz)

I tried plugging that into xrandr (minus the "(47.3 kHz)" at the end,
which it didn't like), but I still got "The selected configuration
for displays could not be applied".

Can anyone suggest where to go from here? The machine is working
beautifully except for the display problem - I would really like
my circles to be round.

--
/~\ cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

[William Colls]

Did you check at either ASUS or ATI to see if there is a downloadable
Linux driver for your machine?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well first of all according to google the screen is actually (1366x768)
as you discovered, so the question is why the linux isn't either seeing
it should be that or allowing you to set it to that.

You say "When I selected System->Preferences->Monitors, the monitor type

came up "Unknown".
The resolution was set to 1024x768 (4:3), and there were no other options."

But that is not how it is done. You need to select
System->Preferences->Screen Resolution - at least on Debian's gnome.

I am sure the radeon stuff has a 'good enough' driver..

What, if anything is in the X config files?

[Charlie Gibbs]

In article <jf4p1e$ohd$1...@news.albasani.net>, t...@invalid.invalid

(The Natural Philosopher) writes:

> William Colls wrote:
>
>> On 01/17/2012 03:11 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>
>>> Last week I got my wife a new laptop. It came with Windows 7; I tried
>>> to live with it, but after a few days I got so infuriated that I wiped
>>> it and installed Ubuntu 10.10. The exorcism went fairly smoothly, once
>>> I tweaked the BIOS to look at the DVD-ROM first instead of the hard
>>> disk.
>>>
>>> However, I noticed that the display was distorted. It's the
>>> same stretching that people inexplicably put up with when
>>> watching 4:3 TV broadcasts on a 16:9 screen. When I selected
>>> System->Preferences->Monitors, the monitor type came up "Unknown".
>>> The resolution was set to 1024x768 (4:3), and there were no other
>>> options.

<tale of woe snipped>

>>> Can anyone suggest where to go from here? The machine is working
>>> beautifully except for the display problem - I would really like
>>> my circles to be round.
>>
>> Did you check at either ASUS or ATI to see if there is a downloadable
>> Linux driver for your machine?

<smacks forehead> Duh! I did take a brief look, but it's a bit of
a trick finding drivers for Linux. I put some more effort into it
this time, though, and managed to find the driver. I downloaded it,
installed it, rebooted, and presto! Everything is perfect.

> What, if anything is in the X config files?

There is no xorg.conf. Or at least there wasn't. Apparently under
Ubuntu it's only used to override default settings. The ATI driver
created an abbreviated xorg.conf which contains just enough entries
to set up the display.

Thanks, guys, for your help. Looks like the ASUS K53U is going to
be a good Linux laptop - 64-bit dual-core AMD processor, 4GB RAM,
and 500GB hard drive, all for only $400.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I've had lots of success with Acers, too.
I looked up that model of yours - there are a few threads on solving fan
and power issues and getting all the touchpad to work 'as expected' is
apparently non trivial as well.

And one thread on a 'no sound' issue.

But its all soluble with patience and research.

[Charlie Gibbs]

In article <jf5a32$82m$2...@news.albasani.net>, t...@invalid.invalid
(The Natural Philosopher) writes:

> Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> Thanks, guys, for your help. Looks like the ASUS K53U is going to
>> be a good Linux laptop - 64-bit dual-core AMD processor, 4GB RAM,
>> and 500GB hard drive, all for only $400.
>
> I've had lots of success with Acers, too.

Yup. My first foray into Linux was on an old Acer laptop with
48M RAM and a 1.3GB hard drive. I first installed Slack 3.5 on
it, and got as far as version 7. It was staying up for a year
at a time without a reboot, and even then the only reason it
went down was due to power failures that outlasted its battery.

I've also had good luck with the Toshiba Satellite 4100.

> I looked up that model of yours - there are a few threads on
> solving fan and power issues and getting all the touchpad to
> work 'as expected' is apparently non trivial as well.
>
> And one thread on a 'no sound' issue.

Yes, a couple of times we haven't been able to wake it up with
anything less than a complete power cycle. As for the touchpad,
it was so flaky even under Windows that I plugged in a mouse.
For some reason I was also getting interference with the keyboard -
perhaps I'm accidentally brushing the touchpad - so I've been
using a wireless keyboard as well.

Sound works fine, though.

> But its all soluble with patience and research.

It all depends on how much time you want to spend. I haven't
been able to make the external VGA connector work yet, but
all in all it's working well enough for now.

[Charlie Gibbs]

In article <1802.435T1...@kltpzyxm.invalid>, cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid

(Charlie Gibbs) writes:

> In article <jf5a32$82m$2...@news.albasani.net>, t...@invalid.invalid
> (The Natural Philosopher) writes:
>
>> Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks, guys, for your help. Looks like the ASUS K53U is going to
>>> be a good Linux laptop - 64-bit dual-core AMD processor, 4GB RAM,
>>> and 500GB hard drive, all for only $400.
>>

>> I looked up that model of yours - there are a few threads on
>> solving fan and power issues
>

> Yes, a couple of times we haven't been able to wake it up with
> anything less than a complete power cycle.

The power issue was becoming more troublesome. Finally, I applied
all outstanding updates (I hadn't wanted to wait for the 350MB of
downloads during installation). At this point the machine wouldn't
boot at all - it would hang early in the startup process. Sometimes
I'd briefly see the screen with "Ubuntu 10.10" and the dots below,
but usually it wouldn't get beyond a blank screen. (Occasionally,
though, it got as far as a "purple screen of death".)

I decided to start over again - although first when I booted
the installation CD I selected "try" rather than "install",
which allowed me to mount the hard drive and back up /home.
Then I rebooted from the CD and did a fresh install. This time
I told it to download and apply that 350MB of outstanding updates
during the installation process. I also installed the video driver.
(In case anyone's interested, the driver package I used is called
"ati-driver-installer-11-12-x86.x86_64.run.)

So far everything is running OK. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.