On Friday 08 September 2006 23:03, Eberhard Moenkeberg wrote:
> During the installation phase, only those facts are valid
> which happen to the user, not those stated in papers.

Sure. The fact is, though, that if a reasonable EDID 
resolution / refresh is found, then it should be used. That's 
what the monitor manufacturers put these data in their monitors 
for!

I've also experienced many problems with SaX over the years, and 
until very recently have generally had to resort to manual 
intervention to get things working the way I wanted. Problems 
have often included SaX2 picking very high (technically within 
specification, but in practice right on the limit) refresh 
rates, particularly with CRT monitors, either using the 
parameters from its database or read down the wire from the 
monitor.

> If I would not use those tricks with F3 (i.e. telling lies
> about the resolution), i would have seen hundreds of black
> screens without any way around it the last year.

Hmm, I certainly experienced some completely non-working 
graphics with older versions, but 10.0 and 10.1 have both 
worked well here (10.1 better than 10.0). Also, I'm surprised 
you're getting stranded without an escape route (apart from 
console hacking) - see below.

> This is annoying, and only a consequence of a wrong method by
> SUSE.

I agree: although in my experience Xorg is very good at 
determining correct settings for attached screens, SaX2 does 
not seem to be nearly as reliable, for me at least.

That was certainly the case until 10.1: 10.1 worked well on this 
machine, which had defeated SaX2 in several previous versions 
(nVIDIA GeForce card with two DVI outputs, running dual head), 
but which worked fine if you just let Xorg pick the resolutions 
and refresh rates according to the data it gets directly from 
the screen.

I don't know how SaX2 works, but I believe it uses a database of 
screens, cards etc. Perhaps it should shift to using the 
resolution and refresh rate data which is read from the monitor 
as the most-trusted information, favouring it over the numbers 
in its database, when the machine-readable information is 
available (apologies to SaX2 developers if it does already!)

> This is a major bug DURING installation, when the user is
> totally helpless.
> After installation one can correct it with sax2, but only if
> one has a chance to reach the state after installation...

Yes. I think the problem occurs not when SaX2 is unable to 
determine ideal settings - in that situation it tends to 
default to sensible baseline IIRC - but when it _thinks_ it's 
got the ideal settings for the system, but in fact they are out 
of range. That's just a bug in SaX2, either due to incorrect 
information in its database, incorrect information reported by 
the hardware, or incorrect interpretation of that reported 
information.

Isn't it the case, though, that after setting the graphics card 
and screen parameters, you can test them out: there's a 
countdown dialogue which you have to press "OK" on to confirm 
the settings work for you? If you don't press it then you go 
back to the standard installer display settings (which must 
have been working for you to get this far!) In this way you can 
adjust the settings until they work, without being stranded at 
a blank screen or terminal. This seems sensible, and I think 
it's how I remember it working in the past.

-- 
Bill Gallafent.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Reply via email to