booting to different monitors
Today I took my desktop home to access our dsl to download the latest open office. I booted into a blank screen after the first grub menu. I was unable to determine how to insert custom boot parameters. Is there a reasonable way to set up a different menu selection in grub to access a monitor with less resolution, or just different parameters? -- John R. Sowden AMERICAN SENTRY SYSTEMS, INC. Residential & Commercial Alarm Service UL Listed Central Station Serving the San Francisco Bay Area Since 1967 mail@americansentry.net www.americansentry.net
On Mon October 31 2005 21:40, John R. Sowden wrote:
Today I took my desktop home to access our dsl to download the latest open office. I booted into a blank screen after the first grub menu. I was unable to determine how to insert custom boot parameters.
Is there a reasonable way to set up a different menu selection in grub to access a monitor with less resolution, or just different parameters?
I found a site on google that showed a chart of video ram vs resolution with hex values in the field. I put vga=0x31F in a new menu item in grub's menu.lst. This allowed the computer to display the boot process, but when it started in kde it went blank, as kde apparently does not check the resolution in current use. How do I deal with this? Another use for a solution: having an external monitor on a laptop, and wanting to use the higher resolution of the ext mon v the built in screen. -- John R. Sowden AMERICAN SENTRY SYSTEMS, INC. Residential & Commercial Alarm Service UL Listed Central Station Serving the San Francisco Bay Area Since 1967 mail@americansentry.net www.americansentry.net
John R. Sowden wrote:
On Mon October 31 2005 21:40, John R. Sowden wrote:
Today I took my desktop home to access our dsl to download the latest open office. I booted into a blank screen after the first grub menu. I was unable to determine how to insert custom boot parameters.
Is there a reasonable way to set up a different menu selection in grub to access a monitor with less resolution, or just different parameters?
I found a site on google that showed a chart of video ram vs resolution with hex values in the field. I put vga=0x31F in a new menu item in grub's menu.lst. This allowed the computer to display the boot process, but when it started in kde it went blank, as kde apparently does not check the resolution in current use.
How do I deal with this? Another use for a solution: having an external monitor on a laptop, and wanting to use the higher resolution of the ext mon v the built in screen.
At the grub boot screen, type in a 3, which will cause boot to stop before starting KDE. Log in as root, start mc, migrate to /etc/X11, and make a copy of xorg.conf with some other name. Then start sax2 to recreate xorg.conf with settings suitable for the current display. When that's done, copy the new xorg.conf to some third name. Whenever you need to make the switch again, do as above, except leaving out the sax2 step, instead just copying the appropriate xorg.conf backup file to xorg.conf. When done, do init 5 to start up KDE. You may find you'll want to just use the config for the lower resolution display in order that your desktop window position memories don't keep getting moved around. -- "I can do all things through Him who gives me strength." Philippians 4:13 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/
On 11/1/05, John R. Sowden <jsowden@americansentry.net> wrote:
On Mon October 31 2005 21:40, John R. Sowden wrote:
Today I took my desktop home to access our dsl to download the latest open office. I booted into a blank screen after the first grub menu. I was unable to determine how to insert custom boot parameters.
Is there a reasonable way to set up a different menu selection in grub to access a monitor with less resolution, or just different parameters?
I found a site on google that showed a chart of video ram vs resolution with hex values in the field. I put vga=0x31F in a new menu item in grub's menu.lst. This allowed the computer to display the boot process, but when it started in kde it went blank, as kde apparently does not check the resolution in current use.
How do I deal with this? Another use for a solution: having an external monitor on a laptop, and wanting to use the higher resolution of the ext mon v the built in screen.
Felix's answer is one of the solutions. In any case you need to boot to runlevel 3. But once there, I'd recommend to start yast2, and enable SCPM (profile manager). Create a new profile for your home configuration, and switch to that profile. Then go with sax2 to edit the monitor configuration. If sax2 can not detect the monitor, and tries higher resolution as needed, so your monitor goes black again, try starting it with the "-l" option. This will open it in a low resolution mode so you can continue your work. Once in sax2, setup your monitor with the right parameters. Then: #init 5 this will start kdm, or whatever login manager you have - rock&roll. Now, as you have created profiles, every time you boot, you will have a choice in the grub initial menu to select which profile to boot - so you can choose the right one for your home or work monitor. Cheers Sunny -- Svetoslav Milenov (Sunny)
Hi, On Tue, 1 Nov 2005 09:19:22 -0600 Sunny <.> wrote:
resolution mode so you can continue your work. Once in sax2, setup your monitor with the right parameters. Then: #init 5 this will start kdm, or whatever login manager you have - rock&roll.
Now, as you have created profiles, every time you boot, you will have a choice in the grub initial menu to select which profile to boot - so you can choose the right one for your home or work monitor.
Yeah, scpm is a good tool to achieve that, but even if you configure the various profiles through YaST, it _doesn't_ make any changes to menu.lst of your grub! At least on my 9.1 it really didn't do it, had to make them manually. scpm of SUSE 10.0 I checked just quickly: liked kscpm, which I don't have on 9.1, but no more comments on it. By the way. Interestingly on this oldie 9.1 all of the features of scpm are very- well usable, except the grub controlled switching to profiles, which I could never get work via PROFILE=xxx kernel parameters. (Because always the last active scheme is called, independently, which menu-point you choice during boot.) Strange enough, maybe I should simply open another thread. I'm just afraid, that 9.1 is not so interesting for the masses anymore... Regards, Pelibali
participants (4)
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Felix Miata -
John R. Sowden -
pelibali -
Sunny