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Re: [Alug]Linux and TFT panels
by Dan Beimborn 13 Jun '03

13 Jun '03

I run on a flat panel with a DVI and it's always rock-solid, but I recall at my last job a number of the workstations we had needed to have the refresh rate set in XF86Config so that there was only one choice, 60hz. From messing around with running Linux on arcade monitors (no, really!) I can tell you that the image not being centered like that is quite likely a timing issue. Running xvidtune will help you create your exact modeline, and strangely enough so will AdvanceMame video setup program. Once you have that modeline in for your desktop resolution, it should always work. A second complication I had that was similar was with my laptop- it supports a key combination to use the external display, which is somewhat confusion to X. Basically, you had to start it either on the local, on the secondary, or on both displays. Setting it to external only would result in it sometimes "Remembering" the higher refresh rate, causing my display to go off to the right of the screen just like you describe! SO my advice is to try to make sure your XF86Config *only* allows the correct refresh rate, and make it be one that you have centered as best you can using xvidtune or AdvanceMame's video mode generator. DB

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[Alug]Re: Linux and TFT
by richard 13 Jun '03

13 Jun '03

I'm running a laptop system and once had problems with a text based installer (for Debian 3.0). I found an option in my BIOS to 'stretch output to fit screen' (or something along those lines. I don't know whether a similar BIOS option might be available but it fixed my problem. Rich. > I have just replaced my monitor with a TFT panel. > When X is started (I have changed XF86Config-4 appropriately) the > image > will sometimes appear perfectly positioned but at other times the > right-hand edge of the image appears in the centre of the screen with > the rest disappearing off the left edge and the image looks a little > distorted. If I then switch to a text console and back to the > graphics console the image is displayed correctly. > I have never seen this with my old monitor neither does it happend on > my laptop (TFT screen). Can anyone suggest why it should happen? > Barry Samuels > http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk > The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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[Alug]Linux and TFT panels
by Edenyard 13 Jun '03

13 Jun '03

Barry Samuels wrote: > > I have just replaced my monitor with a TFT panel. > ...then Adam Bower wrote: > > Thats along my lines of thought, most of the panels I have played with have an > auto-adjust button that resizes the screen. Does yours have one, and does it > work? Also if you turn the screen off and on again does that make it work also? > For what it's worth, my experience with Linux and TFTs got off to a very frustrating start. My Linux box runs SLackware 8.1 and has an ATI AGP video card identified as 'ATI 3D Pro Turbo' which I'd managed to set up quite nicely with my Dell 15" CRT monitor and everything seemed to work well - even the screen blanking after about 15 minutes. When I received an LG Flatron 1510S LCD to try on extended loan, I read its book, set the vertical rate to 60Hz for all modes as suggested and was met with a blank screen on starting X. I tried every combination of settings I could think of, but it wouldn't have it. Eventually, I swapped my XF86 config file for one provided by Slackware called XF86config-fbdev, which I think uses a plain VESA driver. At last pictures, but that's about all. Now the screen blanking doesn't work in X at all and there's a curious effect when the screen tries to blank in non-X working: the normal white text blanks, but any highlighted text (e.g., in 'man' pages) remains displayed - very odd. I also had problems when I tried to use the Flatron LCD to install Suse 8.1 on a friend's PC. No matter what settings I tried, the image on the screen would flash on and off every 1 or 2 seconds while X was running. Eventually I gave up and used a CRT monitor for the rest of that installation job. I know that that particular PC installation has been used since with a Philips LCD without any apparent problems, so maybe Flat Ron hasn't quite got the hang of something! Maybe not all LCDs are equal? The LG Flatron 1510S has one of those autoselect buttons mentioned by Adam, but I find that it generally manages to hit a setting that's far from optimal, especially when working at less than its maximum 1024x768 resolution. That applies equally in Linux and also in DOS, which is where I spend most of my working hours. I've found that the best way to set the clock and phase settings on the LCD is to display a screen full of very small dots (the 'grid' on a CAD programme works very wellfor this) and then adjust 'clock' and 'phase' to remove any visible interference patterns visible between the grid structure and the LCD's dot structure. If you get these settings wrong, some vertical lines (depending on where on the screen they fall) get smeared horribly across several of the LCD's pixels - useless for CAD! Interestingly, when I tried the Knoppix CD (kindly provided by Adam) on my box, it ran up, detected my video card and LCD and managed to set the correct parameters first time using an ATI driver. And it managed to pick a good-looking smaller than normal font for the text display whilst booting up - something I've never succeeded in doing with Slackware. All I told Knoppix was that the vertical rate should be 60Hz at the boot prompt. Cheers, Gerald.

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[Alug]Linux and TFT panels
by Barry Samuels 13 Jun '03

13 Jun '03

I have just replaced my monitor with a TFT panel. When X is started (I have changed XF86Config-4 appropriately) the image will sometimes appear perfectly positioned but at other times the right-hand edge of the image appears in the centre of the screen with the rest disappearing off the left edge and the image looks a little distorted. If I then switch to a text console and back to the graphics console the image is displayed correctly. I have never seen this with my old monitor neither does it happend on my laptop (TFT screen). Can anyone suggest why it should happen? Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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[Alug]Compiling kernel and modules
by Barry Samuels 11 Jun '03

11 Jun '03

I have compiled kernels many times but it has just occurred to me that after compiling and installing the new modules they are now running under the current (old) kernel until the new kernel is booted. How long could this situation go on without causing problems? Would it cause problems at all? Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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[Alug]Bourne shell script for APM: help request
by Dan Hatton 10 Jun '03

10 Jun '03

I'm trying to run the command sleepd --sleep-command "/usr/bin/apm -S" -u 900 to conserve some energy, by putting my computer in standby after 15 minute of idling. This command works fine when I type it at a tcsh or sh prompt, but now I want to run it at boot time. The Debian booting structure is guiding me to do this via a distro-provided script, /etc/rc5.d/S20sleepd (a symlink to somewhere else, IIRC.) I've appended the full text of this script below, but I think the crucial bits are #! /bin/sh DAEMON=/usr/sbin/sleepd NAME=sleepd PARAMS="" if [ -e /etc/default/sleepd ]; then . /etc/default/sleepd fi case "$1" in start) start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile /var/run/$NAME.pid \ --exec $DAEMON -- $PARAMS ;; esac exit 0 I'm supposed to set things up the way I like them by editing a line in /etc/default/sleepd that says PARAMS=something-or-other. I've tried various permutations, all of which give error messages, e.g. PARAMS=--sleep-command "apm -S" -u 900 -> /etc/rc5.d/S20sleepd: apm -S: command not found PARAMS='--sleep-command "apm -S" -u 900' -> /usr/sbin/sleepd: invalid option -- S /usr/sbin/sleepd: invalid option -- " PARAMS=--sleep-command apm -S -u 900 -> usage: apm [-VvmMsSd] [--verbose] [--minutes] [--monitor] [--suspend] [--standby] I suspect the problems result from my poor understanding of how the Bourne shell handles quotes. Any ideas, please? Here's the full script: #! /bin/sh DAEMON=/usr/sbin/sleepd NAME=sleepd DESC="APM sleep daemon" test -f $DAEMON || exit 0 set -e # Source defaults file; edit that file to configure this script. PARAMS="" if [ -e /etc/default/sleepd ]; then . /etc/default/sleepd fi case "$1" in start) # Ensure apm module is loaded. test -e /dev/apm_bios && touch /dev/apm_bios echo -n "Starting $DESC: " start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile /var/run/$NAME.pid \ --exec $DAEMON -- $PARAMS echo "$NAME." ;; stop) echo -n "Stopping $DESC: " start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --pidfile /var/run/$NAME.pid \ --exec $DAEMON -- $PARAMS echo "$NAME." ;; restart|force-reload) echo -n "Restarting $DESC: " start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --pidfile \ /var/run/$NAME.pid --exec $DAEMON -- $PARAMS sleep 1 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile \ /var/run/$NAME.pid --exec $DAEMON -- $PARAMS echo "$NAME." ;; *) echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/$NAME {start|stop|restart|force-reload}" >&2 exit 1 ;; esac exit 0 -- Ta Dan Hatton

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[Alug]RE: Bourne shell script for APM: help request
by Andrew Wallis 10 Jun '03

10 Jun '03

Unless I missed something, only one person mentioned "eval" and then seemed to dismiss it almost immediately. I think that's a pity because it's just these sorts of problems that "eval" is designed for. The following two scriptettes demonstrate: --------- script -------------- #!/bin/sh PARMS='p1 p2 --command "this is a command" p5' eval ./daemon $PARMS ------- end script ------------ --------- daemon -------------- #!/bin/sh declare -i PN=1 for PARM in "$@" do echo "parameter $PN = \"$PARM\"" PN=PN+1 done ------- end daemon ------------ Gives: parameter 1 = "p1" parameter 2 = "p2" parameter 3 = "--command" parameter 4 = "this is a command" parameter 5 = "p5" which is what was wanted wasn't it? I probably missed something as I'm seriously advanced in the senility stakes. Regards Andrew Wallis

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[Alug]IPMasq file structure
by Paul Tansom 10 Jun '03

10 Jun '03

Does anyone know of a good website to help me get my head around the file structure for the configuration files of IPMasq? I've just installed it on a server I've setup and I'd like to make a few changes to the IPChain configurations, but although I can see the idea behind splitting up the config into a collection of files I can't get my head around which files to alter or how to add any - probably largely due to the fact that they are coded as fairly generic solutions and read info from the system configuration. Of course the other reason could be that I'm practically dead on my feet and my brain isn't on top form! :-) -- Paul Tansom: - contact paul(a)aptanet.com for more information Internet and Intranet Solutions -- http://www.aptanet.com/

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[Alug]Knoppix boot problem
by Ben Francis 09 Jun '03

09 Jun '03

I'm getting a bit frustrated. Firstly, I'm not talking about booting off the CD-ROM, I can do that fine. I've installed Knoppix to the hard disk of a computer, with great ease I might add, so it's now meant to be a Debian system (see other thread somewhere or other...) Every time I boot the system from cold it freezes half way through booting X at a sickly grey screen and an immobile X cursor in the centre. If the computer has been turned on a while and I shut it down, it boots up again fine. I don't quite know what to do, I suspect it could be a hardware problem? The hardware is all quite a few years old and from various dubious second hand locations. (A poor geek has to get his kit from somewhere, can't afford to buy it new!) Thanks in advance Ben "tola" Francis

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[Alug]Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 09 Jun '03

09 Jun '03

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include tkirc, bitchx, xchat and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://freshmeat.net/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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