From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041111 Firefox/1.0 Description of problem: I have this new Dell D600 laptop which I have installed FC2 on. It has a SXVGA+ (ie, 1400x1050) display. X will display at this resolution (at 24-bit depth) on the LCD display, no problem. However, when I plug the laptop into a docking station which has an Acer 77e 17" monitor attached to it, the Acer displays the 1400x1050 desktop, as viewed through a panning 640x480 window. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): xorg-x11-6.7.0-2.i386 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Plug Acer monitor into laptop. 2. Boot Linux. Actual Results: X display is a 640x480 panning window on a desktop that is 1400x1050. Expected Results: X display should be non-panning 1400x1050. Additional info: I have this new Dell D600 laptop which I have installed FC2 on. It has a SXVGA+ (ie, 1400x1050) display. X will display at this resolution (at 24-bit depth) on the LCD display, no problem. However, when I plug the laptop into a docking station which has an Acer 77e 17" monitor attached to it, the Acer displays the 1400x1050 desktop, as viewed through a panning 640x480 window. Experimentation has shown that the presence or absence of the dock (ie just plugging the Acer straight into the back of the Dell) makes no difference. I know it is possible to have this monitor display 1400x1050x24 -- Windows does it. I've also driven this monitor at 1600x1280x24 when attached to a different linux system. I also know that it is possible to have this Linux display properly at this resolution on an external monitor -- I have a Sony G400 at the office which does it. I have gone through the FC2 System Settings -> Display applet and have explicitly defined my monitor as an AcerView 77e. I have confirmed in my /etc/X11/xorg.conf that there is an appropriate monitor defined: Section "Monitor" Identifier "Monitor0" VendorName "Monitor Vendor" ModelName "Acer 77e" HorizSync 30.0 - 72.0 VertRefresh 50.0 - 120.0 EndSection The presence and/or absence of this section doesn't appear to change anything. When I boot the laptop at the office, it is connected to the Sony G400 and it does the appropriate thing. At home, it still does not behave with the Acer. In the Xorg.0.log, I've noticed that when connected to the Sony, the log reports: (II) RADEON(0): Displays Detected: Monitor1--Type 2, Monitor2--Type 1 (II) RADEON(0): Monitor2 EDID data --------------------------- (II) RADEON(0): Manufacturer: SNY Model: 290 Serial#: 8011257 (II) RADEON(0): Year: 2000 Week: 25 (II) RADEON(0): EDID Version: 1.2 [...lots of monitor stuff trimmed...] (II) RADEON(0): End of Monitor2 EDID data -------------------- (II) RADEON(0): (II) RADEON(0): Primary Display == Type 2 (II) RADEON(0): Clone Display == Type 1 ...which tells me that it is detecting the Sony all by itself and making appropriate assumptions. Where as when it is connected ot the Acer, I see: (II) RADEON(0): Displays Detected: Monitor1--Type 2, Monitor2--Type 1 (II) RADEON(0): (II) RADEON(0): Primary Display == Type 2 (II) RADEON(0): Clone Display == Type 1 ...which tells me that either the Acer isn't detected at all, or it is detected improperly. However, I still don't know what to do about it. I'm starting to suspect that the config file is merely there for my amusement and xorg is trying to auto-detect things at startup rather than read the config file. What I can't find is an explanation as to why I'm getting this 640x480 on an external monitor which is clearly capable of displaying much more, nor an explanation of how to fix it. All pages on the web I've found suggest that it means that my monitor can't run the video mode I selected (known to be false) or that my video card can't run the video mode I selected (also known to be false). It has to be a configuration problem. Incidentally, a co-worker has the same problem, only he's started with FC2 and done an "upgrade" install to FC3. I will attach the following files: - my xorg.conf file; - a log file showing what happens with the Acer; - a log file showing what happens with the Sony; - a log file showing what happens when nothing is plugged in.
Created attachment 108127 [details] What happens when the Acer is connected
Created attachment 108128 [details] What happens when the Sony is connected
Created attachment 108130 [details] What happens when nothing is connected
Created attachment 108131 [details] My xorg.conf
Opened this as a bug with xorg; see https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2035 Their response: NOTABUG Details: ------- Additional Comments From agd5f 2004-12-08 14:25 ------- the radeon driver defaults to driving each display with a separate crtc (called clone mdoe). if it can't find the DDC data for the attached monitor it defaults to 640x480@60Hz to avoid potentially damaging you monitor. You can either disable clone mode (in which case crtc1 will drive both outputs) or add the use the clonehsync and clonevrefresh options (to tell the driver the monitor's limits when it can't get DDC data). see that radeon man page for more about the options. ------- Additional Comments From agd5f 2004-12-08 14:30 ------- for your coworker, in 6.8.x the options have changed a bit, see the radeon man page for more.
...so clearly the problem is that there's no way to set the required Radeon options through the display control panel. Would this be an enhancement request? (I doubt it -- the current fashion is to remove options from GUI applications, not add more.)
Upstream is right, this is not a bug. If your monitor or LCD panel can not be DDC probed, or otherwise autodetected, then the driver must make assumptions as to how to drive the hardware in a safe manner without damaging the panel or monitor. That basically means choosing low resolution/refresh which is unlikely to damage the display. Some hardware is not autodetectable at all. I don't know wether this is the case for your hardware or not. Windows generally wont ever show this type of problem because either WIndows autodetects the hardware, or if not detectable, Windows has .INF files that specify the hardware's capabilities, which are supplied directly by the manufacturers. There are also other possibilities that are more complex than I will get into in a bug report. The bottom line basically though, is that if DDC is unavailable, for whatever reason, you must manually configure the display in your X server config file, or the drivers will use defaults chosen to be as safe as possible. My recommendation is to upgrade to Fedora Core 3 (our currently supported release), and update the OS to all latest rpms via yum or up2date. After doing so, run: system-config-display --reconfig Then reboot completely to do full hardware reset. In the new startup, run X and see if things are better at all. If not, then experiment with the various Radeon driver specific options on the "radeon" manpage, and with configuring the display panel via xorg.conf. If you require assistance at all, use the X.Org xorg mailing list to seek help. You may also want to repeat this with the xorg-x11 from rawhide, which is a newer release with several Radeon driver fixes and enhancements. This may or may not help your problem depending on wether it is a real driver issue, or just lack of DDC capability in your system. After doing all of this, if you still believe there may be a real bug at heart, feel free to file a new bug in freedesktop.org bugzilla for review, indicating the current OS release, xorg release, etc. that you are using. Generally speaking, if X.Org does not consider something an X.Org bug, Red Hat X developers and other community X developers are likely to arrive at similar conclusions. Setting status to "CURRENTRELEASE"
Yeah, I get that. It isn't an Xorg bug. In the FC3 case, the answer is to add lines: Option "CRT2HSync" "30.0 - 82.0" Option "CRT2VRefresh" "50.0 - 90.0" ..to the "Device" section describing my radeon device. These values were divined by manually adding the monitor through the Display control panel, and then transfering those values into the Option fields. (As the response from xorg says, consult your "radeon" man page for the equivilent commands in FC2.) The problem is that setting the monitor type in the system-config-display should cause the system to use that monitor type, and it doesn't (because the Radeon is treating the external monitor plug as a separate display, which may be fine, but there's no way to change that from system-config-display, which isn't). This, incidentally, is still true in FC3 with all the current updates applied. So. Should I refile this as a FC3 bug in system-config-display?