Headless laptop - controlling X settings
I have an old laptop (an Acer Travelmate 270 to be exact) that has no screen. The screen busted years ago, and I simply removed it. This wasn't a big problem until a couple days ago: I'd hook it up to an external screen via the VGA out, and everything was fine. But a couple days ago, I upgraded from Debian wheezy to Debian jessie, and after the upgrade the external monitor now claims the provided signal is "Out of Range." This doesn't appear to be the same as "No signal" because after several minutes it switches off (about when the screen blanking would kick in) and pressing a keyboard button brings back the "Out of Range" signal. I can ssh into the machine, so there's an option to fix it. I could potentially install Ubuntu or re-install wheezy, but I'd prefer to fix this if possible. How do I tell X to detect and use the monitor over the external VGA connector - and only that connector, ignoring the now-missing internal screen candidate? And failing that, how can I force 1024x768 (which is what was working fine with wheezy) with mirroring across both outputs? Thanks. P.S. I was clever enough to try ssh with X-forwarding and then running arandr and eventually xrandr, but they work with the X server they can talk to ... which is your local machine, not the remote you've sshed into. Even had that worked, I wouldn't know what settings to put into what file: it was bad enough back in the days of editing /etc/X11/Xorg.conf by hand, but it's now been replaced by a twisty maze of start-up scripts that are supposed to detect everything for you that mostly work but which have remained stubbornly opaque to me when they fail ... -- Giles http://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr@gmail.com
1. Check BIOS to set monitor priority. 2. Try booting into console mode by - runlevel 1 at kernel boot option - alt-ctrl-fn to get VTn I assume you already did 1 and 2. 3. SSH into it and 'telinit 1'. Don't know if it still works with systemd. 4. Try Ubuntu. :-) -- William See if you can get it to boot to console mode: On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 08:38:00PM -0500, Giles Orr wrote:
I have an old laptop (an Acer Travelmate 270 to be exact) that has no screen. The screen busted years ago, and I simply removed it. This wasn't a big problem until a couple days ago: I'd hook it up to an external screen via the VGA out, and everything was fine. But a couple days ago, I upgraded from Debian wheezy to Debian jessie, and after the upgrade the external monitor now claims the provided signal is "Out of Range." This doesn't appear to be the same as "No signal" because after several minutes it switches off (about when the screen blanking would kick in) and pressing a keyboard button brings back the "Out of Range" signal. I can ssh into the machine, so there's an option to fix it. I could potentially install Ubuntu or re-install wheezy, but I'd prefer to fix this if possible. How do I tell X to detect and use the monitor over the external VGA connector - and only that connector, ignoring the now-missing internal screen candidate? And failing that, how can I force 1024x768 (which is what was working fine with wheezy) with mirroring across both outputs?
Thanks.
P.S. I was clever enough to try ssh with X-forwarding and then running arandr and eventually xrandr, but they work with the X server they can talk to ... which is your local machine, not the remote you've sshed into. Even had that worked, I wouldn't know what settings to put into what file: it was bad enough back in the days of editing /etc/X11/Xorg.conf by hand, but it's now been replaced by a twisty maze of start-up scripts that are supposed to detect everything for you that mostly work but which have remained stubbornly opaque to me when they fail ...
-- Giles http://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr@gmail.com --- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
On 25 January 2016 at 21:04, William Park <opengeometry@yahoo.ca> wrote:
1. Check BIOS to set monitor priority. 2. Try booting into console mode by - runlevel 1 at kernel boot option - alt-ctrl-fn to get VTn
I assume you already did 1 and 2.
3. SSH into it and 'telinit 1'. Don't know if it still works with systemd. 4. Try Ubuntu. :-)
BIOS -> Main -> Power on display -> changed to "Simultaneous" from "Auto-selected." This has fixed the main problem. Thanks! Now I'm up against another problem, almost certainly the reason I landed here in the first place: the folks at Debian removed the xserver-xorg-video-sis between wheezy and jessie, and that's (probably) what broke the machine as it has a SiS video card. It sorta works with the vesa driver (1024x768 max and weird fonts), but I guess I'll live with that (or figure out how to fix it). Thanks for all the suggestions.
See if you can get it to boot to console mode: On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 08:38:00PM -0500, Giles Orr wrote:
I have an old laptop (an Acer Travelmate 270 to be exact) that has no screen. The screen busted years ago, and I simply removed it. This wasn't a big problem until a couple days ago: I'd hook it up to an external screen via the VGA out, and everything was fine. But a couple days ago, I upgraded from Debian wheezy to Debian jessie, and after the upgrade the external monitor now claims the provided signal is "Out of Range." This doesn't appear to be the same as "No signal" because after several minutes it switches off (about when the screen blanking would kick in) and pressing a keyboard button brings back the "Out of Range" signal. I can ssh into the machine, so there's an option to fix it. I could potentially install Ubuntu or re-install wheezy, but I'd prefer to fix this if possible. How do I tell X to detect and use the monitor over the external VGA connector - and only that connector, ignoring the now-missing internal screen candidate? And failing that, how can I force 1024x768 (which is what was working fine with wheezy) with mirroring across both outputs?
Thanks.
P.S. I was clever enough to try ssh with X-forwarding and then running arandr and eventually xrandr, but they work with the X server they can talk to ... which is your local machine, not the remote you've sshed into. Even had that worked, I wouldn't know what settings to put into what file: it was bad enough back in the days of editing /etc/X11/Xorg.conf by hand, but it's now been replaced by a twisty maze of start-up scripts that are supposed to detect everything for you that mostly work but which have remained stubbornly opaque to me when they fail ...
-- Giles http://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr@gmail.com
On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 08:38:00PM -0500, Giles Orr wrote:
I have an old laptop (an Acer Travelmate 270 to be exact) that has no screen. The screen busted years ago, and I simply removed it. This wasn't a big problem until a couple days ago: I'd hook it up to an external screen via the VGA out, and everything was fine. But a couple days ago, I upgraded from Debian wheezy to Debian jessie, and after the upgrade the external monitor now claims the provided signal is "Out of Range." This doesn't appear to be the same as "No signal" because after several minutes it switches off (about when the screen blanking would kick in) and pressing a keyboard button brings back the "Out of Range" signal. I can ssh into the machine, so there's an option to fix it. I could potentially install Ubuntu or re-install wheezy, but I'd prefer to fix this if possible. How do I tell X to detect and use the monitor over the external VGA connector - and only that connector, ignoring the now-missing internal screen candidate? And failing that, how can I force 1024x768 (which is what was working fine with wheezy) with mirroring across both outputs?
Thanks.
P.S. I was clever enough to try ssh with X-forwarding and then running arandr and eventually xrandr, but they work with the X server they can talk to ... which is your local machine, not the remote you've sshed into. Even had that worked, I wouldn't know what settings to put into what file: it was bad enough back in the days of editing /etc/X11/Xorg.conf by hand, but it's now been replaced by a twisty maze of start-up scripts that are supposed to detect everything for you that mostly work but which have remained stubbornly opaque to me when they fail ...
Pointing the environment XAUTHORITY and DISPLAY at the local machine should allow you to run xrandr remotely. DISPLAY=:0.0 and XAUTHORITY=~/.Xauthority or maybe something in /tmp depending on the displaymanager tends to work. -- Len Sorensen
On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 11:10 AM, Lennart Sorensen < lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 08:38:00PM -0500, Giles Orr wrote:
I have an old laptop (an Acer Travelmate 270 to be exact) that has no screen. The screen busted years ago, and I simply removed it. This wasn't a big problem until a couple days ago: I'd hook it up to an external screen via the VGA out, and everything was fine. But a couple days ago, I upgraded from Debian wheezy to Debian jessie, and after the upgrade the external monitor now claims the provided signal is "Out of Range." This doesn't appear to be the same as "No signal" because after several minutes it switches off (about when the screen blanking would kick in) and pressing a keyboard button brings back the "Out of Range" signal. I can ssh into the machine, so there's an option to fix it. I could potentially install Ubuntu or re-install wheezy, but I'd prefer to fix this if possible. How do I tell X to detect and use the monitor over the external VGA connector - and only that connector, ignoring the now-missing internal screen candidate? And failing that, how can I force 1024x768 (which is what was working fine with wheezy) with mirroring across both outputs?
Thanks.
P.S. I was clever enough to try ssh with X-forwarding and then running arandr and eventually xrandr, but they work with the X server they can talk to ... which is your local machine, not the remote you've sshed into. Even had that worked, I wouldn't know what settings to put into what file: it was bad enough back in the days of editing /etc/X11/Xorg.conf by hand, but it's now been replaced by a twisty maze of start-up scripts that are supposed to detect everything for you that mostly work but which have remained stubbornly opaque to me when they fail ...
Pointing the environment XAUTHORITY and DISPLAY at the local machine should allow you to run xrandr remotely.
DISPLAY=:0.0 and XAUTHORITY=~/.Xauthority or maybe something in /tmp depending on the displaymanager tends to work.
If X is indeed running on the affected monitor, and you can get remote authority to write to the X server driving your VGA port, you might be able to control the output using "xrandr". It might also be possible to specify an xrandr command line for the display manager's benefit. X.org configuration has gone largely automatic, but it should still be possible to constrain the monitor settings without going full-tilt into CRTC timings...
On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 11:29:01AM -0500, Mike wrote:
If X is indeed running on the affected monitor, and you can get remote authority to write to the X server driving your VGA port, you might be able to control the output using "xrandr". It might also be possible to specify an xrandr command line for the display manager's benefit.
X.org configuration has gone largely automatic, but it should still be possible to constrain the monitor settings without going full-tilt into CRTC timings...
Certainly the /var/log/Xorg.0.log or whatever it is called these days might be useful to look at to see why it might be giving bad timing. -- Len Sorensen
participants (4)
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Giles Orr -
Lennart Sorensen -
Mike -
William Park