Greetings,
Well, y'all, gather around: It's time for me to take a deep breath
and recite a "festival of pain" adventure I have had...
Well, to make a long story (only somewhat) shorter: To change
resolution you must use the keypad "+" and keypad "-", not the "+"
above the "=" (on US keyboards).
On Mdk 7.2, 8.0 (and probably 8.1), the keypad emulation in X is
somewhat hosed.
1. Press and hold Shift, then Numlk on top row. (this is
supposed to switch the keypad on).
2. Now, sadly, nothing happens on the keys which are double
marked. (you press the numeric pad marked keys, and
nothing appears).
"Gasp!" you say, or perhaps "%$*&!" (like I did).
But relax, here's how you fix that. This hint is from:
http://www.xig.com/Pages/FAQsPages/FAQsSup-3D-Answers.html
For a temporary fix, open a shell and type:
xmodmap -e "keycode 77 = Num_Lock"
exactly as above, including quotes & spaces.
Now, pressing Shift+Numlk engages the numlock mode correctly on the
keypad.
So - after all this, you're thinking: "Cool! I can get there from
here!"
...But alas, it is not to be. Even though the numeric keypad
basically works (you get '3' when you press the 'l' key); pressing
Ctrl-Shift-/ (which should translate to Ctrl-Shift-+) causes nothing
to happen to change resolution.
This is where I said "%$*&! again, and taking the Perl motto to
heart, namely "There's more than one way to do it" - Soooooo.... this
is how I do it:
I just save the original control file and then edit it by hand to
the desired resolution (Xfree uses the first one it finds in the list)
and save it as XF86Config-4.1024x768, as an example).
Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
XFree86 uses the first one it finds, so change the sections to:
Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
And you will end up in 1024x768 after restarting X.
BTW, this problem also occurs on IBM 'space saver' keyboards that I
prefer to use on desktop systems, which doesn't have a separate keypad
either. However, the xmodmap fix that I just described works fine
there on the desktop (where, of course, I never change resolution).
However, if someone gets this working correctly on Thinkpads (I
suspect this is probably a key code mapping issue of some sort) -
please let me know!
Sorry for the "Ramble and Rant"... but I first went through this
whole thing about an hour before a very large and very important
presentation, not that there was any pressure at the time or
anything... oddly enough, that presentation was about the virtues of
Linux (insert groan of irony here).
But seriously - hope that this helps.
David
On Thursday 29 November 2001 08:10, Mark D'voo wrote:
> if ctrl alt +/- isn't working, you probably don't have your
> /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file setup correctly. You need to make sure you have
> every resolution you want in your file
>
> Section "Screen"
> Identifier "Screen0"
> Device "My Video Card"
> Monitor "S/M 955DF"
> DefaultDepth 24
> Subsection "Display"
> Depth 24
> Modes "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
> EndSubSection
>
> mark
>
> On Friday 30 November 2001 02:58, you wrote:
> > Whats the easiest way to change resolution?
> > Ctrl - Alt - +/- isn't working and mandrake control center screws up my
> > usb mouse.
> > Thanks
--
"Entropy Requires No Maintenance"
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft?
Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
