[EdLUG] Graphics issues

[Edinburgh Linux Users Group]

An Andrew wrote:
> I'm running Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon on a Dell laptop, and have trouble with my
> (intel) graphics card. I want my screen resolution to be different to the
> default, but any changes I make (with xrandr for example) get reset after a
> restart or even a screen lock.

I'm not running Mint, or similar hardware, and have never done
anything with xrandr; but if nobody else has any suggestions then
here's all I've got.
 
[...]
> Then I tried creating an xorg.conf file using X -configure in recovery mode,
> but get an error:
> 
> "Number of created screens does not match number of detected devices."
> 
> And can't seem to find my way past that, really not finding much on google, as
> it all seems to be people setting up second monitors, or who already have an
> xorg.conf file.

I don't know why they stopped shipping an example file under
/usr/share/doc/xserver-xorg/examples/xorg.conf.  Well, on a .deb-based
system like Mint you ought to be able to reconfigure the X server
*package* with

 sudo dpkg-reconfigure -p high xserver-xorg

Or is it xserver-xorg-video-$VENDOR ?  Apparently VENDOR=intel is only
meant to be used with antiques these days, but I'm not sure what the
replacement is.  Unfortunately it's likely that whichever package it
is does its work by invoking X -configure, so if that's broken...
 
> I also tried to set GRUB_GFXMODE in the grub, but this seems to have no effect
> (should it even?)

Oh, in /etc/default/grub?  That probably only affects the console that
grub itself offers during boot.  (And even that only after you run
"sudo update-grub".)  You might conceivably end up needing to set
something in grub to tell the kernel to use some sort of graphics-card
workaround, but that would go in GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX.

> So, what I'm wondering is.. Should I be creating an xorg.conf in the first
> place? If so, how can I do that given that I can't run X -configure? If not,
> what should I do? I can't have a system that forces me to reboot every 5 times
> I unlock the screen (gross guesstimate)

Is there nothing intelligible in the logs?  I'd say to look at
/var/log/Xorg.0.log, but I hear rumours that file's moved to somewhere
like ~/.local/share/xorg on systems more up-to-date than mine.

 ...

Many years ago when the configfile name in question was XF86Config, I
once spent a frustrating hour trying to reconfigure my X server; I had
a whole directory full of sample configuration files that I wanted to
try things from, but whenever I restarted X it would just crash - even
on my original known-good config!  Eventually it turned out that the
server was *first* looking in my current directory - and I'd named my
collection of sample files ~/XF86Config, so it was trying to read that
directory as a text file!  Once I renamed that, everything was OK.

I very much doubt that anecdote will help you, but the lesson I
learned from it might: read the logs, and especially, make sure you've
identified the error the logs are declaring to be fatal.
-- 
Justin B Rye
http://jbr.me.uk/