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Ubuntu Lucid Lynx on HP Z200 - Intel HD graphics

It mostly worked out of the box, except that xorg would only offer me some crappy resolutions (max 1370x768 or so) and be unable to detect my display, so I had to make my own xorg.conf.

Here is some of the process:

Manually configuring the screen (xorg.conf)

You have to be careful when manually setting xorg.conf, you could potentially damage your monitor, although that mostly applies to CRT monitors (LCD's are safer)

My video card is a built-in Intel graphics HD (in processor), the driver for that on linux is i915 (which worked fine) ... however it can't detect the display correctly though that chip, so it only offers lame "safe" *VGA resolutions.

Interestingly If I add a PCI graphic card and plug the same display to it, then it DOES detect the monitor fine

Getting infos about the graphic card and monitor

lspci | grep Graphic
    00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)

My monitor is a Dell 23" widescreen (E2310HC)

First we need to know what the monitor can do, you can use (LCD monitor)

sudo dccprobe

This will tell you a lot about the monitor and what what it can do.

It is best to check the manufacturer specs if available, for example for me it was available at:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/MONITORS/E2010H/en/ug/about.htm

Setting up the sync/refresh rates

Anyway, from the manufacturer specs and/or dccprobe output we need to find the Horisontal Sync rates and Vertical refresh rates

In my case: 30-83 & 50-76
So we want to add those to the "Monitor" section of /etc/X11/Xorg.conf

See my whole /etc/X11/xorg.conf at the end of this post (you might have to create that file if it doesn't exist yet on your system)

	HorizSync 	30-83
	VertRefresh	50-75

Setting up the resolution modes

From the manufacturer specs and/or dccprobe you should know what resolutions are available (at which refresh rate), so we want to add the one we are interested in in the Screen/Display section.

In my case:

        Modes	"1920x1080@60" "1600x900@75" "1152x864@75" "1024x768@75"

The way Ubuntu works now, I think that is only used by the login screen, once in X this is not used (it seems to use the results from the xrandr command instead)

Setting up ModeLines

After setting the previous settings I was able to get "better" refresh rates (up to ~1700*1200) but not the best possible ones and some odd ones.

xrandr was able to guess those better resolutions using refresh/sync rates we provided but it's not enough infos to get it all "right"

So we need to specify ModeLines to get the optimal setup.

Luckily there is a cool tool to find out Modelines, cvt
So use CVT to find the modeline for each resolution we are interested in

For example 1920x1080 @ 60Hz:

cvt 1920 1080 60

Repeat for each resolution, then we can add the Modeline entries to the Monitor section:

Modeline "1920x1080_60.00"  173.00  1920 2048 2248 2576  1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync
Modeline "1600x900_75.00"  151.25  1600 1704 1872 2144  900 903 908 942 -hsync +vsync
Modeline "1152x864_75.00"  104.00  1152 1224 1344 1536  864 867 871 905 -hsync +vsync

Restart X windows

You can either kill the "gdm" process or simply reboot.

Now we have all the nice resolutions available

My xorg.conf

Do not just copy that "As is" the refresh rates and modelines might not work and even DAMAGE your screen, adjust those as explain in this post

xorg.conf

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "X.org Configured"
	Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
	InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
	InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
	ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi"
	FontPath     "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType"
	FontPath     "built-ins"
EndSection

Section "Module"
	Load  "dri"
	Load  "record"
	Load  "extmod"
	Load  "dbe"
	Load  "glx"
	Load  "dri2"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Keyboard0"
	Driver      "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Mouse0"
	Driver      "mouse"
	Option	    "Protocol" "auto"
	Option	    "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
	Option	    "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "Monitor0"
	VendorName   "Dell"
	ModelName    "23'' widescreen"

### Start manual config 1 #################################
	HorizSync 	30-83
	VertRefresh	50-75
	Option          "DPMS"
	Modeline "1920x1080_60.00"  173.00  1920 2048 2248 2576  1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync
	Modeline "1600x900_75.00"  151.25  1600 1704 1872 2144  900 903 908 942 -hsync +vsync
	Modeline "1152x864_75.00"  104.00  1152 1224 1344 1536  864 867 871 905 -hsync +vsync
### End manual config 1 ###################################

EndSection

Section "Device"
        ### Available Driver options are:-
        ### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
        ### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
        ### [arg]: arg optional
        #Option     "AccelMethod"        	# [<str>]
        #Option     "DRI"                	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "ColorKey"           	# <i>
        #Option     "VideoKey"           	# <i>
        #Option     "FallbackDebug"      	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "Tiling"             	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "Shadow"             	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "SwapbuffersWait"    	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "XvPreferOverlay"    	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "DebugFlushBatches"  	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "DebugFlushCaches"   	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "DebugWait"          	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "HotPlug"            	# [<bool>]
	Identifier  "Card0"
	Driver      "intel"
	VendorName  "Intel Corporation"
	BoardName   "Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller"
	BusID       "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen0"
	Device     "Card0"
	Monitor    "Monitor0"
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     16
### Start manual config 2 #################################
		Modes	"1920x1080@60" "1600x900@75" "1152x864@75" "1024x768@75"
### Start manual config 2 #################################
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
### Start manual config 2 #################################
		Modes	"1920x1080@60" "1600x900@75" "1152x864@75" "1024x768@75"
### Start manual config 2 #################################
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Last modified: Wed Oct 27 14:50:27 EDT 2010 by Thibaut Colar

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