Arch Linux

la-raiders-fan93

Member

Registered: 2009-05-23

Posts: 4

Screen res problem on A6 laptop

I tried installing Arch Linux on my ASUS k53t laptop with an AMD A6-3400M processor and Radeon HD 6550D graphics. When the CD is loading, it starts up fine for a while, then halfway through the resolution for some odd reason will switch to 1920x1080, while my laptop's display only goes up to 1366x768. The only reason I know this is because I borrowed my roommate's TV and plugged my laptop into it. I thought at first that it was an issue with Arch, but as I tried 2 other distributions (Fedora and Ubuntu), they ultimately did the same thing. I even tried setting vga=773 in GRUB to no avail. I would really like to run Arch on this laptop so if someone could point me in the right direction, I'd be extremely grateful.

Radioactiveman

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2010-05-13

Posts: 388

Re: Screen res problem on A6 laptop

Try 'nomodeset' as kernel parameter.

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,606

Re: Screen res problem on A6 laptop

Try 'nomodeset' as kernel parameter.

X won't work with nomodeset.

@la-raiders-fan93: I somehow don't see how the test with a TV says anything about the issue with the internal display. What would be a lot more telling is logs. dmesg in particular.
Then, you could try setting the resolution manually, omething like this on the kernel line in grub:

video=LVDS-0:1366x768

Check in /sys/class/drm for the actual name of the display - if you see card0-LVDS-0 in there, the line I gave is correct, if you see something else, adjust accordingly. If that won't do, as I said, we need logs. Also, install X, see if it behaves better than the console does. And X logs (/var/log/Xorg.0.log) will give us further insight.

la-raiders-fan93

Member

Registered: 2009-05-23

Posts: 4

Re: Screen res problem on A6 laptop

I forgot to mention that my laptop display completely shuts off after it switches resolutions. So, this combined with the fact that his TV shows a resolution obviously higher than 1366x768 when hooked up to my laptop leads me to believe that for some odd reason Linux switches to a resolution that's out of range of the internal display. Also, considering this even happens when booting the install CD, I can't even get to the actual installation process because I can't see anything. I'll wait to grab the TV for a few more moments and try the kernel parameter you posted.

la-raiders-fan93

Member

Registered: 2009-05-23

Posts: 4

Re: Screen res problem on A6 laptop

So I tried the "nomodeset" parameter and it worked, but I couldn't find anything but card0 and card1 under /sys/class/drm so I don't know what I would put instead of LVDS-0.

Update: managed to boot Arch up without the TV hooked up and blindly copied my dmesg log to my Windows partition. Considering Notepad screws up the formatting, I'm just gonna provide it as a file download. One thing I noticed in the log, though, is that at one point it says by each input (VGA, LVSD-1, HDMI-A) "No monitor connected or invalid EDID". Don't know if that has anything to do with it.

http://www.angelfire.com/theforce/atariguy/log2

Last edited by la-raiders-fan93 (2011-11-03 02:09:30)

hotweiss

Member

From: Warsaw, Poland

Registered: 2011-08-21

Posts: 26

Website

Re: Screen res problem on A6 laptop

So I tried the "nomodeset" parameter and it worked, but I couldn't find anything but card0 and card1 under /sys/class/drm so I don't know what I would put instead of LVDS-0.

Update: managed to boot Arch up without the TV hooked up and blindly copied my dmesg log to my Windows partition. Considering Notepad screws up the formatting, I'm just gonna provide it as a file download. One thing I noticed in the log, though, is that at one point it says by each input (VGA, LVSD-1, HDMI-A) "No monitor connected or invalid EDID". Don't know if that has anything to do with it.

http://www.angelfire.com/theforce/atariguy/log2

You'll only be able to get it to boot with the latest Catalyst driver or the latest nightly kernel.