Where are "xrandr" settings stored?
Camaleón
Yesterday I faced a "chicken-egg" problem :-)
I have a virtual machine (virtualbox) in a notebook with Squeeze
installed and wanted to add an external 17" LCD display (native
resolution is 1280x1024).
The problem came when I mistyped the command and gave xrandr a "wrong
value" to use (by "wrong value" I'll just say that viewable screen area
was 1280x60... yes, that reads "60" for the screen height).
In short, I run:
# xrandr --output VBOX0 --mode 1280x60_60.00
(previously I've added the above mode using cvt tool and the required
modeline value)
After that, xrand obeyed my typed settings (sigh...) and the screen
become something like this:
1280 (good)
^
|----------------------------------------------|
| | > 60 (very very very bad)
|----------------------------------------------|
Of course, gnome panel took almost the complete screen and playing inside
the X session was impossible (I couldn't see anything). I thought by
restarting the X server or even the computer, xrandr settings would be
reset but that didn't happen. Also, I started a new session with another
user but the resolution was exactly the same.
Then I concluded that xrandr settings had to have been recorded in any
place outside each user's session profile, but couldn't find the
offending file (I deleted "~/.config/monitors.xml", just in case, but
needless to say it didn't work).
I finally could revert the "minimalistic" screen resolution by using
xterm (typing the commands without seeing them) and providing a new
usable mode to xrandr :-)
After that, some questions arise:
1/ How can it that xrandr settings are remembered for all the users
session?
2/ What is the involved file/tweak command to revert any change and reset
its settings?
Greetings,
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John Jason Jordan
Camaleón <noel...@gmail.com> dijo:
>1/ How can it that xrandr settings are remembered for all the users
>session?
>
>2/ What is the involved file/tweak command to revert any change and
>reset its settings?
I don't know for sure the answers to these questions, but I have some
suggestions for places to look:
1) Rename the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file and then restart the computer.
This will create a new, clean Xorg.0.log file that will be easier to
read than the one you renamed, which probably goes on for pages. Look
through the new file for clues. After reading it, make some command in
xrandr, which will append new information to the file. Read this new
information to see exactly what the command makes X do.
2) Look in /etc/X11/ for configuration files, particularly xorg.conf.
If there is no xorg.conf file try creating a new one using the minimal
commands at x.org:
Section "Device"
Identifier "n"
Driver "nouveau"
EndSection
3) Read the wiki at x.org for more fun things to try:
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Camaleón
> On Sat, 22 Jan 2011 16:13:29 +0000 (UTC) Camaleón dijo:
>
>>1/ How can it that xrandr settings are remembered for all the users
>>session?
>>
>>2/ What is the involved file/tweak command to revert any change and
>>reset its settings?
>
> I don't know for sure the answers to these questions, but I have some
> suggestions for places to look:
>
> 1) Rename the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file and then restart the computer.
> This will create a new, clean Xorg.0.log file that will be easier to
> read than the one you renamed, which probably goes on for pages. Look
> through the new file for clues. After reading it, make some command in
> xrandr, which will append new information to the file. Read this new
> information to see exactly what the command makes X do.
Xorg log was one of the first place I looked at but it showed nothing
wrong... well, it showed the wrong resolution in use (1280x60).
> 2) Look in /etc/X11/ for configuration files, particularly xorg.conf. If
> there is no xorg.conf file try creating a new one using the minimal
> commands at x.org:
>
> Section "Device"
> Identifier "n"
> Driver "nouveau"
> EndSection
That was my last-resort solution should I couldn't get restore the right
screen size using xrandr but I finally succeeded by running commands "on
the dark" :-)
But now you mention... how could I enforce the load of the "vesa" driver
at the boot time? Remember that I am using a virtual machine and VGA
driver is being simulated by virtualbox (driver in use is "VBoxVideo").
> 3) Read the wiki at x.org for more fun things to try:
>
> http://wiki.debian.org/Xorg
Yeah, thanks, I know that page much well but my main concern was how to
undo the settings when using the xrandr tool :-?
Greetings,
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Chris Jones
[..]
> # xrandr --output VBOX0 --mode 1280x60_60.00
[..]
> 1/ How can it that xrandr settings are remembered for all the users
> session?
>
> 2/ What is the involved file/tweak command to revert any change and reset
> its settings?
You could try brute force to narrow it down a bit:
# touch /tmp/xxx
# xrandr ...
# find / -type f -newer /tmp/xxx > /tmp/filelist
# rm /tmp/xxx
You may want to run this on a VM with a small file system, and stick the
commands in a bash script to limit the number of false positives.
cj
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Camaleón
> On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 11:13:29AM EST, Camaleón wrote:
>
> [..]
>
>> # xrandr --output VBOX0 --mode 1280x60_60.00
>
> [..]
>
>> 1/ How can it that xrandr settings are remembered for all the users
>> session?
>>
>> 2/ What is the involved file/tweak command to revert any change and
>> reset its settings?
>
> You could try brute force to narrow it down a bit:
>
> # touch /tmp/xxx
> # xrandr ...
> # find / -type f -newer /tmp/xxx > /tmp/filelist
> # rm /tmp/xxx
>
> You may want to run this on a VM with a small file system, and stick
> the
> commands in a bash script to limit the number of false positives.
That creates a file with 23,339 records on it. Most (all?) of the
modified files are under "/sys" and "/proc" folder.
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Chris Jones
> On Sat, 22 Jan 2011 15:09:22 -0500, Chris Jones wrote:
[..]
> > You could try brute force to narrow it down a bit:
> >
> > # touch /tmp/xxx
> > # xrandr ...
> > # find / -type f -newer /tmp/xxx > /tmp/filelist
> > # rm /tmp/xxx
> > You may want to run this on a VM with a small file system, and
> > stick the commands in a bash script to limit the number of false
> > positives.
>
> That creates a file with 23,339 records on it. Most (all?) of the
> modified files are under "/sys" and "/proc" folder.
Hehe.. just making sure you were paying attention :-)
I ran the above test and after grepping out the /sys & /proc's, I came
up with just one file... Xorg.0.log..!
So it looks like this setting is remembered somewhere outside the file
system.
cj
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Eduardo M KALINOWSKI
> I ran the above test and after grepping out the /sys & /proc's, I came
> up with just one file... Xorg.0.log..!
>
> So it looks like this setting is remembered somewhere outside the file
> system.
At least in my experience, xrandr modes are *not* remembered. I have to
rerun it everytime X is started or configure Xorg.conf. Curious that in
your system the settings persist.
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Camaleón
> From: Chris Jones
>> I ran the above test and after grepping out the /sys & /proc's, I came
>> up with just one file... Xorg.0.log..!
>>
>> So it looks like this setting is remembered somewhere outside the file
>> system.
That was the conclusion I reached.
And I find it very dangerous, if something got messed up you'll need many
doses of patience and more than a basic knowdledge of your system to
restore the correct resolution.
> At least in my experience, xrandr modes are *not* remembered. I have to
> rerun it everytime X is started or configure Xorg.conf. Curious that in
> your system the settings persist.
Yes, they do... and so I asked :-)
I also thought the resolution would be forgotten when restarting the
system but that did not happened.
To discard a problem within the VM environment, I run the same xrandr
commands on a openSUSE box I keep installed over "real irons" (external
USB device) and I got the same result: xrandr settings are automatically
remembered after reboot.
I can do more testing but if someone can confirm the problem (do not try
on production machines), I can open a bug report on this.
Greetings,
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Henrique de Moraes Holschuh
> > At least in my experience, xrandr modes are *not* remembered. I have to
The X server certainly isn't supposed to store it anywhere.
> Yes, they do... and so I asked :-)
So, something is trying to be too smart in your desktop environment
(KDE/gnome most likely). Find it, Nuke it, and file a bug report :)
--
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them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
Henrique Holschuh
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Camaleón
>> Yes, they do... and so I asked :-)
>
> So, something is trying to be too smart in your desktop environment
> (KDE/gnome most likely). Find it, Nuke it, and file a bug report :)
That's what I wanted to do but... any clue on how to "find out" the
culprit? :-)
I am using stock GNOME (the one that comes with squeeze).
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Paul E Condon
I have no special knowledge. Just a suggestion on reading this thread.
Outside the file system, but still on disk, is the swap space.
I have always supposed that swap space was always wiped clean and
fully re-initialized on boot, but I don't know. Short of that, I suppose
something can be written into the boot rom. But that seems harder to
do than something involving creative (crazy?) use of swap space.
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Camaleón
> On 20110123_115724, Camaleón wrote:
(...)
>> I can do more testing but if someone can confirm the problem (do not
>> try on production machines), I can open a bug report on this.
>>
>
> I have no special knowledge. Just a suggestion on reading this thread.
> Outside the file system, but still on disk, is the swap space. I have
> always supposed that swap space was always wiped clean and fully
> re-initialized on boot, but I don't know. Short of that, I suppose
> something can be written into the boot rom. But that seems harder to do
> than something involving creative (crazy?) use of swap space.
Crazy things happen all time so I tried your suggestion.
I disabled "/swap" from "/etc/fstab" and restarted the VM. My current
resolution is 1280x1024. After booting I checked that no "/swap"
partition was in use and tried the same steps by running xrandr to change
the mode to 800x600 and restarted the machine but the last selected mode
(800x600) was kept after restarting with no "/swap" at all.
This is getting very weird. How can this setting prevail between
bootings? Even this is something involving VM guest additions module it
should be saved in some place.
Greetings,
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Henrique de Moraes Holschuh
> >> Yes, they do... and so I asked :-)
> >
> > So, something is trying to be too smart in your desktop environment
> > (KDE/gnome most likely). Find it, Nuke it, and file a bug report :)
>
> That's what I wanted to do but... any clue on how to "find out" the
> culprit? :-)
Find whatever dialog box is used to configure multiple monitors and
resolutions, and check that.
I don't use gnome, so I can't really help you there.
--
"One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
Henrique Holschuh
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Camaleón
> On Sun, 23 Jan 2011, Camaleón wrote:
>> On Sun, 23 Jan 2011 12:02:31 -0200, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
>> >> Yes, they do... and so I asked :-)
>> >
>> > So, something is trying to be too smart in your desktop environment
>> > (KDE/gnome most likely). Find it, Nuke it, and file a bug report :)
>>
>> That's what I wanted to do but... any clue on how to "find out" the
>> culprit? :-)
>
> Find whatever dialog box is used to configure multiple monitors and
> resolutions, and check that.
No application involved, I just manually typed the raw "xrandr" commands.
> I don't use gnome, so I can't really help you there.
"gnome-display-properties" creates its own file under "~/.config/
monitors.xml" but this file is not generated when invoking "xrandr" from
console. In fact, as I said in my first post, I deleted the
"monitors.xml" file but there was no change :-(
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shawn wilson
so, it's a virtual. good, copy it, register it as a new name, take a snapshot (what you should have done before doing this in the first place) and boot it up (the copy - we're not doing anything to your primary - in fact, take another copy of that and put it on a network drive, usb hdd or something for safe keeping). then, boot it up and remove X (you can go this route, or install a new system, do an ls -lR and diff after your command). either way, you can go in and totally rape a filesystem after taking a snapshot and no one really cares (unless it's production).
my second recommendation (might also try it first - though the former might be a learning experience) is to check the virtualbox tools (or whatever they call it). it's probably got a config somewhere on your virtual that might store monitor settings. the other place i'd look is in the physical configuration file that virtualbox actually uses to configure the machine.
though i currently use virtualbox on my mac, i am much better versed in esx, so i can't point you to actual files, just tell you what might cause issues. let us know where you end up.
Paul E Condon
> On Sun, 23 Jan 2011 05:24:54 -0700, Paul E Condon wrote:
>
> > On 20110123_115724, Camaleón wrote:
>
> (...)
>
> >> I can do more testing but if someone can confirm the problem (do not
> >> try on production machines), I can open a bug report on this.
> >>
> >
> > I have no special knowledge. Just a suggestion on reading this thread.
> > Outside the file system, but still on disk, is the swap space. I have
> > always supposed that swap space was always wiped clean and fully
> > re-initialized on boot, but I don't know. Short of that, I suppose
> > something can be written into the boot rom. But that seems harder to do
> > than something involving creative (crazy?) use of swap space.
>
> Crazy things happen all time so I tried your suggestion.
>
> I disabled "/swap" from "/etc/fstab" and restarted the VM. My current
But whatever you did to 'disable' swap might work on the design
intended use of swap and might not have any effect on X non-standard
cryptic access to that piece of hard disk real estate.
Paranoid I am.
> resolution is 1280x1024. After booting I checked that no "/swap"
> partition was in use and tried the same steps by running xrandr to change
> the mode to 800x600 and restarted the machine but the last selected mode
> (800x600) was kept after restarting with no "/swap" at all.
>
> This is getting very weird. How can this setting prevail between
> bootings? Even this is something involving VM guest additions module it
> should be saved in some place.
>
> Greetings,
>
> --
> Camaleón
>
>
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Liam O'Toole
> Hello,
>
> Yesterday I faced a "chicken-egg" problem :-)
>
> I have a virtual machine (virtualbox) in a notebook with Squeeze
> installed and wanted to add an external 17" LCD display (native
> resolution is 1280x1024).
>
> The problem came when I mistyped the command and gave xrandr a "wrong
> value" to use (by "wrong value" I'll just say that viewable screen area
> was 1280x60... yes, that reads "60" for the screen height).
[...]
VirtualBox stores the last window size for each guest OS, in the file
~/.VirtualBox/Machines/[machine_name]/[machine_name].xml. For example:
<ExtraDataItem name="GUI/LastGuestSizeHint" value="720,400"/>
(I think you mentioned elsewhere in this thread that you tried the same
experiment on a USB stick, with the same result, but the above could
help you recover the guest OS' dimensions.)
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Darac Marjal
> On 2011-01-22, Camaleón <noel...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > Yesterday I faced a "chicken-egg" problem :-)
> >
> > I have a virtual machine (virtualbox) in a notebook with Squeeze
> > installed and wanted to add an external 17" LCD display (native
> > resolution is 1280x1024).
> >
> > The problem came when I mistyped the command and gave xrandr a "wrong
> > value" to use (by "wrong value" I'll just say that viewable screen area
> > was 1280x60... yes, that reads "60" for the screen height).
>
> [...]
>
> VirtualBox stores the last window size for each guest OS, in the file
> ~/.VirtualBox/Machines/[machine_name]/[machine_name].xml. For example:
>
> <ExtraDataItem name="GUI/LastGuestSizeHint" value="720,400"/>
>
> (I think you mentioned elsewhere in this thread that you tried the same
> experiment on a USB stick, with the same result, but the above could
> help you recover the guest OS' dimensions.)
I think this is the nub of the problem. xrandr requested the resolution
change, Virtualbox complied and then when you restart X, the size of the
modified window is detected by Xorg.
I suspect that, if you had the VirtualBox tools installed in the guest,
you could have fixed this just by doing Machine -> Auto-resize Guest
Display.
Camaleón
> On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 10:14:34PM +0000, Liam O'Toole wrote:
>> On 2011-01-22, Camaleón wrote:
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > Yesterday I faced a "chicken-egg" problem :-)
>> >
>> > I have a virtual machine (virtualbox) in a notebook with Squeeze
>> > installed and wanted to add an external 17" LCD display (native
>> > resolution is 1280x1024).
>> >
>> > The problem came when I mistyped the command and gave xrandr a "wrong
>> > value" to use (by "wrong value" I'll just say that viewable screen
>> > area was 1280x60... yes, that reads "60" for the screen height).
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> VirtualBox stores the last window size for each guest OS, in the file
>> ~/.VirtualBox/Machines/[machine_name]/[machine_name].xml. For example:
>>
>> <ExtraDataItem name="GUI/LastGuestSizeHint" value="720,400"/>
Hum... good catch! :-)
In fact, once I've read your post I made some searching on this value and
it seems that holds the size of the VM window. This value is completely
independent of any xorg or xrandr settings stored settings that are
available inside the VM -and I could verified this point by setting a
"0,0" assignment to "GUI/LastGuestSizeHint" which had no effect after
restarting the virtual box machine.
>> (I think you mentioned elsewhere in this thread that you tried the same
>> experiment on a USB stick, with the same result, but the above could
>> help you recover the guest OS' dimensions.)
Yep, the other test I made was over an IDE disk (by means of external USB
case) but I found the mess: on this system I used "gnome-display-
properties" to change the display settings and this was effectively
stored under "~/.config/monitors.xml" (with the VM problem I forgot to
delete it and wrongly assumed the problem was the same under the two
systems while it was not!).
> I think this is the nub of the problem. xrandr requested the resolution
> change, Virtualbox complied and then when you restart X, the size of the
> modified window is detected by Xorg.
Sort of. VirtualBox "obeys" two VM main parameters here¹:
1/ Scale mode ("host key+C")
2/ Resize the machine's window (which allows to fit the full VM desktop
at the same size of the VM window)
> I suspect that, if you had the VirtualBox tools installed in the guest,
> you could have fixed this just by doing Machine -> Auto-resize Guest
> Display.
And that did it!
It was "auto resize guest display". The solution to this problem was just
by pressing "Ctrl+G" and that was all what I needed to get the VM to be
restored at a comfortable resolution without having to make "black magic"
or weird sacrifices!
Thanks to all of you who presented any tip on this, I really appreciated.
This just turned out to be another of those PEBKAC situations that
happens from time time :-)
¹http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html#intro-resize-window
Greetings,
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