On Thu, 19 Jan 2006, John Franks wrote:

> On Wed, 2006-01-18 at 21:01 -0500, Harish Narayanan wrote:
>> Kevin Byun wrote:
>>> I am having a trouble with the screen resolution with my laptop on
>>> Linux.  The setting on my laptop is currently 800 X 600 from the
>>> installation of linux.  However, I need to have the resolution setting
>>> to be 1280 X 768.  The setting on "Resolution" application doesn't
>>> show the selection of 1280 X 768.
>>> I don't have the file Xorg in /etc/X11 directory and I am lost.  Could
>>> you experts show me the ways to fixing this problem?
>
>
>> If you're tentative about tweaking configuration files, try running the
>> display configuration application (as root) again. One of the tabs on
>> the top (I am just guessing, I haven't seen it in a while) is hardware
>> settings. Just choose your monitor type as 'Generic LCD 1280x768',
>> restart X and you should have that option the next time you run the
>> resolution chooser.
>
>
> The paragraph above is the key advice.  However, 1280x768 is not a
> correct aspect ratio, so it will not be a choice.  Did you mean
> 1024x768? or 1280xsomething_else?

It is the native resolution of some notebooks, like the Dell X1. In 
addition, the VESA BIOS of this device has no such mode.

My solution for this was to find the "915resolution" utility, and
insert something like

 	/usr/local/sbin/915resolution 4d 1280 768 16

into /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit, right before the line
RHGB_STARTED=0 .

Of course this won't help if the graphics chip isn't from intel.
And even then, don't blame me if it fries your hardware.

Hope this helps,
 	Stephan


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