video res not behaving

[realtime]

Hi. Looking for some help as to why my laptop refuses to display native resolution.

It's an old Thinkpad, T22, with a native res of 1024x768x32. The current OS install of PCBSD will use the correct resolution when installing, but when starting the desktop is drops to 800x600.

I've parsed through my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. I only have 1024x768x32 listed in the appropriate place. The desktop display tool shows resolutions up to 800x600.

The laptop has a Savage video chip. That's the driver the install picks as well.

Should I be forcing the video to use the VESA driver instead? Are there other config locations I should be reviewing?

btw this problem brought up another problem. I can not configure the network settings, because the network window is too tall and can not be resized. The lower options are not accessible, making configuring the network from the GUI almost impossible.

Thanks for any help!

[pheet]

Are there any errors/warnings in /var/log/Xorg.0.log?

You may need to set the horizontal & vertical frequencies of the display manually in /etc/X11/xorg.conf (it may be the driver is refusing to use the resolution specified because it believes it's not possible with the horz/vert rate).

If all else fails, try using the VESA driver.


HTH,
Pheet

[realtime]

Thanks for the response. I ended up reinstalling the system after other unsuccessful attempts giving other OS's a try to see if my problem was OS independent.

Correction on the model, it's a T21 thinkpad, not T22. Interestingly, DesktopBSD would not allow me to change video resolutions whatsoever, and Kubuntu would not install. I reverted back to PCBSD, in which I not only installed successfully, but my resolution problem fixed itself.

One note of importance...the first round installing, the installation would appear to complete, reboot, then it could not find the kernel. Reinstalling again immediately, all problems went away, I now have a solid system. This happened two independent times.

Let me follow this up with one more issue. I'm ultimately building this laptop for someone else, and I'd like to have the included games installed. The GUI in previous installs (to this situation) would always have games installed under a start menu folder, however games are no where to be found, and I can not seem to figure out how to get them into the menu (even after doing an install upgrade to re-apply the game applications). Any help on this one?

[TerryP]

There should be a menu updater tool that can try to autodetect programs to add to the start menu, it gives a list of what found and let's you check what you want to add.


If that doesn't work, try the menu editor or manually working on the .desktop files used to create them.

[graedus]

Thanks for the response. I ended up reinstalling the system after other unsuccessful attempts giving other OS's a try to see if my problem was OS independent.

Correction on the model, it's a T21 thinkpad, not T22. Interestingly, DesktopBSD would not allow me to change video resolutions whatsoever, and Kubuntu would not install. I reverted back to PCBSD, in which I not only installed successfully, but my resolution problem fixed itself.

One note of importance...the first round installing, the installation would appear to complete, reboot, then it could not find the kernel. Reinstalling again immediately, all problems went away, I now have a solid system. This happened two independent times.

Let me follow this up with one more issue. I'm ultimately building this laptop for someone else, and I'd like to have the included games installed. The GUI in previous installs (to this situation) would always have games installed under a start menu folder, however games are no where to be found, and I can not seem to figure out how to get them into the menu (even after doing an install upgrade to re-apply the game applications). Any help on this one?


There is a boot option to set up the display (you should try it next time).

Perhaps the kde-games meta port wasn't installed. (you should have been given an option to install additional software from cd2. You should be able to later add those manually using pkg_add, pointing the location at cd2.

[realtime]

The installer did prompt for the 2nd disk, which I gave it.

This post is being created from a second pc with PCBSD insalled - a stronger machine than the first (AMD 1 ghz, 600+mb ram, gf3 ti200). The games menu still doesn't show up. I installed WoP (world of padman, q3, opengl game), that appeared in games > arcade > wop.

A related note - NVidia drivers kicked in on install, but took a couple tries. Refresh rates are not allowed to be changed in the display properties, so I'm going to try modding xorg.conf.

I didn't quite understand the explanation as to how to get the menu item. To be straightforward, is there an intuitive, easy way to get the games (or any) folder into the menu?

[TerryP]

If you right click on one of the menu entries you should be able to select an option to edit the menu. I havn't used the K-Menu a lot in quite awhile... lol.


I think the program it launches is called "kmenuedit" so you could put type that without quotes (kmenuedit) into a run dialog and run it. That program probably will do what you want give or take some tweaking.

[realtime]

Ok, I'll give that a shot, see what else I can come up with. I do appreciate the responses! :D

[realtime]

I'm afraid kmenuedit isn't doing the trick. I'll do my best to describe what's onscreen and the behavior:

[KDE Menu Editor]
- A number of menus exist here that I should be able to add to the K Menu start menu.
- Only options here (cut/paste/new item/new submenu/new seperator) do not put menu items into the K Menu.
- Unable to drag items out of the editor.
- Copying an item, then pasting it somewhere complains 'clipboard is empty'.

[Configure - KDE Panel]
> Menus - [Optional menus] contain other menus that can be applied, none that are located in the kde menu editor.
> Taskbar - nothing practical for the situation here
- No other related options

[Add Applet - KDE Panel]
- different items than the kde menu editor

Tried bouncing a menu item to the panel and back to the kmenu, no luck.

Is this a KDE problem, or PCBSD implementation issue? Am I missing something, or am I not doing something correctly? Seems like this trivial problem is taking much more effort than necessary.