X Config Problems w/ RH 8.0 and GeForce4

[Brandon Joseph Adams <bja@illinois.dyndns.org>]

I came into a couple nasty problems with X when using XFree86 and
RedHat's config tools. I looked around redhat.com and couldn't find
anything about it so I was wondering if any of you have seen it. Anyway,
here goes.

#Background
After I installed redhat 8.0 (burned cd-rs, but they're not the problem
because I've used them with sucess before) and rebooted into the system
I had a 1024x768 resolution at 24bits with the nv driver. I downloaded
and installed the NVIDIA drivers, made the necessary changes to the X
config file by hand and then restarted X. Everything worked fine and I
still had a 1024x768 display at 24bit resolution and now I had 3D
Acceleration. (I know you think nvidia is evil but their stuff works.) I
enjoyed the system and after awhile I decided to go back down to 800x600
(I think my mom liked it better or something of that nature). I should
point out that RedHat's installer correctly detected my wheel mouse and
set it up right because I was using it in Konqueror. 

# Problems Begin
The problems started when I used RedHat's X setup tool to make the
display changes. When it wrote the config file it left some things out
and now my wheel mouse didn't work. My mom decided she liked 1024x768
better so I hand edited the config file this time to fix my mouse and
make sure redhat didn't screw with something else. (I have done all of
this at a virtual console in the 3rd runlevel.) I su root root and
change to runlevel 5 where I draw a black screen where GDM on top of X
is supposed to be. Having encountered this before, I simply alt/ctrl/+
to get back down to 800x600.

I now spend the next 3 hours (from about 1 am to 4 am) finding out that
Red Hat has done something horrible to X because a config that worked
for me under various other modern distros and flavors on the same
hardware and gave me 1024x768. I tried various drivers (vesa,nv,nvidia)
just in case it was a problem with drivers, read the man page 4 times
and could not get 1024x768 to even be considered by X.

# Solution
I rebooted my computer (*gasp*) with the redhat install cd in and switch
to a virtual console after it wrote a temporary config file. I mounted
my hard disk, copied over the installer's config, and rebooted. Guess
what? This next line is the magic that sucked 3 hours from me and I have
never needed before in over 15 distributions and flavors of linux.

DisplaySize 270.933333333 203.2

That was in the "Monitor" section of XF86Config. Does anyone know why
Red Hat is the only distro that requires this? Also, has anyone else had
this problem? 

Later,
Brandon Joseph Adams
bja@illinois.dyndns.org

   

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