Why Xorg/x11 shows only 4:3 aspect resolutions?

English Games
#1

Hi All.
In my modest -66year old user- experience with Linux (using Suse as early as ver:9, trial and error way, as I never studied UNIX or C, only Jurasic machine hex, Assembly, Fortran, CPM and Basic. My first computer: 1974 home made 7 segment LEDs, hex keyboard, Signetics-2650 and Zilog Z80, S100bus, 512bytes static RAM).
OpenSuse after X11 was adopted for good, WXGA resolutions for the 16:10 aspect ratio, i.e. 1440x900, 1920x1080, regardless brand of Wide LED monitors (I installed AOC 19wide, Viewsonic Optiquest 19wide, Samsung 22wide) on GPU (i.e. nVidia as GF8000series, 520GT , radeon equivalents) are hardly detected-configured. Grub and Grub2 often miss the mentioned wide screen resolutions at installations. After upgrades automatically installed new versions, more likely your gear next reboot will start grub2 with the lowest possible colour-resolution (nomodeset or whatever), and x11 autodetect - splash resolutions list will go no further than 4:3 aspect and 1024x768. Installing the proprietary drivers at boot, by editing grub2 as in OpenSuse 12.2, 12.3 and now 13.1 is confusing, lag of console resources and painful… It was still fine when one could jump to init 3 and open-close sessions as SU, install the drivers and edit xorg.config file. Now Ctrl+Alt+F3 jumps to a console one cannot use, since one’s usual user or root log and password are not longer accepted…** Wonder why?**
:’(

-OpenSuse 12.3 Dartmouth on AthlonXII-64, amd chipset, native Radeon, 4Gb ram, nVidia 5200Gt-2Gb + Viewsonic Optiquest Q191wb.
-OpenSuse 13.1 (Bottle) (x86_64) on Phenom II X6 Tubocore, nVidia chipset, native nVidia, 16Gb ram, nVidia GF8500-500Mb + Samsung Syncmaster S22B150N.
Tks.

#2

Please try keep you posts brief and too the point, with the relevant info. Rambling like this only makes it harder to decipher the real issue.

  1. Some monitors misreport their resolution capability, so that can impact on display modes available. Use the following command to report the modes detected/offered by your current graphics driver.
xrandr

If you post the output here, please enclose it within

...[/CO..] tags for easier reading (and to preserve output formatting).

2. You should examine /var/log/Xorg.0.log to determine what the likely issue is. It's a lengthy file, so if you need to share it here, we advise you to upload it to http://paste.opensuse.org/ and share the link to it here. Others may then be able to advise further.

3. The graphics drivers play no part in the initial splash display resolution. (They don't get loaded until Xorg starts.)
#3

Thanks for your answer,
As requested the log file on: SUSE Paste

On first installation openSuse 12.3 did well but somehow after one of the auto upgrades, I lost the required XWGA 1440x900 16:10 aspect ratio. So i do not work graphics with this computer. Guess it could be discarded as obsolete.
Have a nice Xmas/NewYear season. Wilscco

The ouput text for xadr:

[Xrandr output

wilfred@linux-2s0m:~> xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1152 x 864, maximum 16384 x 16384
DVI-I-0 disconnected primary (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VGA-0 connected 1152x864+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm
1024x768 75.0 + 70.1 60.0
1600x1200 65.0 60.0
1400x1050 74.8 60.0
1280x1024 75.0 60.0
1280x960 60.0
1152x864 75.0*
832x624 74.6
800x600 75.0 72.2 60.3 56.2
700x525 74.8 60.0
640x480 75.0 72.8 59.9
512x384 70.1 60.0
400x300 72.2
320x240 72.8 60.1
DVI-I-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)]

OpenSuse 12.3 Dartmouth on AthlonXII-64, amd chipset, native Radeon, 4Gb ram, nVidia 5200Gt-2Gb + Viewsonic Optiquest Q191wb.

#4

I note from your Xorg.0.log that the driver fails to get the monitor’s EDID, so the graphics card does not know what the VGA-connected monitor is capable of. (This could be an issue with the cable you’re using, or perhaps the monitor itself.)

    21.019] (WW) NVIDIA(0): Unable to get display device CRT-1's EDID; cannot compute DPI
    21.019] (WW) NVIDIA(0):     from CRT-1's EDID.
    21.019] (==) NVIDIA(0): DPI set to (75, 75); computed from built-in default
    21.019] (--) Depth 24 pixmap format is 32 bpp
    21.019] (II) NVIDIA: Using 3072.00 MB of virtual memory for indirect memory
    21.019] (II) NVIDIA:     access.
    21.022] (II) NVIDIA(0): ACPI: failed to connect to the ACPI event daemon; the daemon
    21.022] (II) NVIDIA(0):     may not be running or the "AcpidSocketPath" X
    21.022] (II) NVIDIA(0):     configuration option may not be set correctly.  When the
    21.022] (II) NVIDIA(0):     ACPI event daemon is available, the NVIDIA X driver will
    21.022] (II) NVIDIA(0):     try to use it to receive ACPI event notifications.  For
    21.022] (II) NVIDIA(0):     details, please see the "ConnectToAcpid" and
    21.022] (II) NVIDIA(0):     "AcpidSocketPath" X configuration options in Appendix B: X
    21.022] (II) NVIDIA(0):     Config Options in the README.
    21.023] (II) NVIDIA(0): Setting mode "CRT-1:nvidia-auto-select{}"

It may be possible to persuade the nvidia driver to use your preferred display mode (provided the monitor and graphics card are capable of it). You’d need to generate a working modeline, add it to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-monitor.conf, and restart the X-server with CTRL-ALT-Backspace (twice).

A CLI tool such as cvt or gtf to generate such a modeline

cvt 1400 900 60
# 1400x900 59.96 Hz (CVT) hsync: 56.01 kHz; pclk: 103.50 MHz
Modeline "1400x900_60.00"  103.50  1400 1480 1624 1848  900 903 913 934 -hsync +vsync
#5

Thanks for your answer. XWGA monitors are not easy.
Similar issue I had on OpenSuse 13.1 with a Samsung S22B150, and yes, 1920x1080_60Hz worked when I connected the cable to nVidia 520GT DVI via DSUB adaptor.
I will try your advice later, this time I will test it on the Wievsonic 1440x900_60 on a nVidia GF8600. On OpenSuse 12.3, the driver works ok with a LG Flatron (16:9) 1320x768_60.
Have a Merry Xmas.