Many moons ago, I had to run an update to the nVidia driver for my Kubuntu box. After installing it, I found that the next time I ran X, my display was offset by about 50px to the right. Normally, it would have been possible to fix this via the monitor, most of which have a convenient "auto" button to solve such issues. However, my set-up involves the use of a KVM switch, which allows me to use a single keyboard, mouse and monitor for more than one PC (four in my case). Ergo, I couldn't just click the auto button to sort this issue out as that would mean ruining the display on the other three systems. I was too lazy to search for a fix at the time, but I finally got annoyed enough to fix it last night.
The fix goes as follows:
- Open up Konsole / your terminal of choice and navigate to
/etc/X11
. - Back up your
xorg.conf
file :sudo cp xorg.conf xorg.conf.pre.xvidtune
. - Type
sudo nano xorg.conf
. - Open up another Konsole terminal and type
xvidtune
. Read and heed the warning message. - To make things easier at a later stage, note down all the values listed on a piece of paper or in a text editor.
- Use the left, right, up, down etc. buttons to adjust the display. Preferably, do this one click at a time and use the test button to check the results.
- The values that control horizontal alignment are HSyncStart and HsyncEnd. Similary, vertical positioning is controlled by VSyncStart and VsyncEnd respectively. HTotal and VTotal control width and height.
- Once you are satisfied with the display position, note down the values of the variables you have modified.
- Go back to the terminal where you are editing xorg.conf. Look for something like
Section "Monitor"
where you will find a ton ofmodeline
listings. - Look for the modeline pertaining to your current display resolution - for e.g. 1280x1024. Use the values from step 5 to isolate the correct line.
- Once you have the correct line, you will very likely not know which number to replace with the new variables. Again use the values from step 5 to narrow things down.
- Replace the values with the new values. For e.g., on my machine the original line was:
modeline "1280x1024@60" 108.0 1280 1328 1440 1688 1024 1025 1028 1066 +hsync +vsync
.
After adjusting my display's horizontal position, the new line with new HSyncStart and HSyncEnd values looked like the following:
modeline "1280x1024@60" 108.0 1280 1348 1460 1688 1024 1025 1028 1066 +hsync +vsync
. - Once this is done, save the file by pressing CTRL + X, close xvidtune and other applications and restart your display manager using CTRL + ALT + Backspace.
- Ideally, you will see your screen correctly positioned now. If you encounter any problems or require more information on
xvidtune
, typeman xvidtune
in a terminal to bring up the help page. If you would like to go back to the old configuration, use the backup file you created in step 2 to overwrite the current xorg.conf and restart your display manager again.
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Comments
When i click test, i get:
When i click test, i get: sorry you have requested a mode-linethat is not possible, or not supported by your hardware configuration.
Check your monitor's
Check your monitor's documentation for supported modelines.