[sf-lug] display totally effed

[Tom Haddon]

On Tue, 2009-04-14 at 14:23 -0700, chadwick crawford wrote:
> I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 on an HP pavillion dv2000 laptop.  I upgraded
> my seahorse, because there seemed to be some problems stemming from
> bad configuration there.  And afterword, I was given some popup
> request to upgrade my desktop.  Like the half-blind fool I am, I said
> "OK, do that."  And then everything went south.  First it went into
> low graphics mode.  I tried to select the proper resolution on the
> laptop screen I thought was mine.  It wouldn't allow me to set it at
> anything greater than 800 by 640, although my desktop wallpaper seemed
> to be at the correct resolution.  No amount of wrasslin'  with display
> options seemed to have any effect.  This was okay; I went through it
> when I first installed Ubuntu.  I figured it out, somehow.  So I
> restarted.
> 
> And now, folks, everything is really cattywumpus.  It seemed like
> everything was normal at first, and then the login screen came in.
> Split into 4 columns.  I logged in, and yes, it continued.  My desktop
> is repeated in four illegible columns across my monitor.  I think that
> I can get to my Administration menu, but I can't read anything that it
> says.
> 
> It seems to me most likely that my display is set in such a way that
> my graphics card doesn't know what to do with it.  Is there anyway to
> fix this from a live cd?  Can anyone help a poor wayward idiot?

Seems like you've had a lot of input so this may confuse things more
than ever, but...

You can try reconfiguring xorg.conf as follows - I'd recommend:

- opening a virtual terminal (ctrl+alt+F1, for instance) and login there
(this should be a non graphical terminal - text only.
- Stopping X/gdm (sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop)
- Backup your xorg.config file (sudo
cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.mybackup)
- sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg
- Restart X/gdm (sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start)

This should give you a basic working configuration. If not, try again
without the "-phigh" option and select the most basic setup you can
"Vesa 800x600", for instance. If that still doesn't work, you can
restore your old configuration:

- opening a virtual terminal (ctrl+alt+F1, for instance) and login there
(this should be a non graphical terminal - text only.
- Stopping X/gdm (sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop)
- Restore xorg.config file (sudo
cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.mybackup /etc/X11/xorg.conf)
- Restart X/gdm (sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start)

Thanks, Tom


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