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#1 2012-12-28 01:23:02

NeoZelux
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Registered: 2012-10-28
Posts: 45

[SOLVED] Login screen changes resolution after a second

It' weird but my login screen on this laptop with arch always loads up at a lower resolution (larger font) then after like one second the screen refreshes into a higher res login. Didn't really know where to search for this issue, does anyone have any idea why it does that? There's also like a randomly red-purple colored T character around the top of the screen doesn't really bother me but maybe it's related somehow. Also I'm describing this in context of an alienware m15x with nvidia geforce GTX 260m
And it's being driven by the nouveau pkg xf86-video-nouveau

Last edited by NeoZelux (2016-08-18 06:16:44)

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#2 2012-12-28 02:45:48

cfr
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From: Cymru
Registered: 2011-11-27
Posts: 7,130

Re: [SOLVED] Login screen changes resolution after a second

Try enabling KMS in early boot?


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#3 2012-12-28 03:09:34

WonderWoofy
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From: Los Gatos, CA
Registered: 2012-05-19
Posts: 8,414

Re: [SOLVED] Login screen changes resolution after a second

It is not bad, and is what is supposed to happen if you don't set early KMS.  You should probably research KMS.  If you want it to go away, do what cfr suggests.

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#4 2012-12-28 08:41:19

DSpider
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From: Romania
Registered: 2009-08-23
Posts: 2,273

Re: [SOLVED] Login screen changes resolution after a second


"How to Succeed with Linux"

I have made a personal commitment not to reply in topics that start with a lowercase letter. Proper grammar and punctuation is a sign of respect, and if you do not show any, you will NOT receive any help (at least not from me).

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#5 2012-12-28 19:17:34

NeoZelux
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Registered: 2012-10-28
Posts: 45

Re: [SOLVED] Login screen changes resolution after a second

ok, I just wanted to understand why it did that really. I'll research enabling early KMS.
---ok I tried then it just changes resolution earlier while all the boot messages are printing.
My question is why does this only happen on my laptop? On my desktop at no point during the boot process does it need to refresh the screen with different resolution?
I'm only curious so far as you guys have an understanding off the top of your head, If your response is for me to just do some more research then I'll resign from this question thank you.
I mean I'd like to know but I don't need to know smile

Last edited by NeoZelux (2012-12-28 19:33:37)

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#6 2012-12-28 21:09:45

NVS
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Registered: 2007-12-30
Posts: 29

Re: [SOLVED] Login screen changes resolution after a second

I don't really use nouveau much. But on the machine I wanted to I found out that the card (GT 240) doesn't play nice with nouveau. On the LiveCD, it gets a funky character, spits out a message, and then nouveau uses software fbcon and continues to boot. Perhaps your card has some compability issues, and you run a more compatible card on your desktop.

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#7 2012-12-28 22:58:51

cfr
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From: Cymru
Registered: 2011-11-27
Posts: 7,130

Re: [SOLVED] Login screen changes resolution after a second

On an old laptop I've got with a Nvidia card dual booting Debian, I saw this part way through booting Linux. (I haven't done anything to enable KMS - I was just relieved to finally get usable graphics in Linux and much more bothered by the fact that I cannot control the backlight!) Basically, the entire display goes to pieces like garbled white on black and shifts a lot and then after a noticeable moment, the display resolves into a much higher resolution version and everything settles down.

That's the only machine I've seen this on but I don't have an especially extensive experience base. It doesn't happen with my current laptop with intel graphics running Arch - and I don't remember it happening so dramatically even without early KMS though the screen did change resolution later in the boot process.

I have issues on a machine with ATI graphics but not this particular one. (Sadly - this particular issue would not be a big deal.)

But I don't know if it is a function of nouveau or of some combination of nouveau, graphics card, other hardware, boot loader or what.


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#8 2012-12-29 02:07:07

HungGarTiger
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From: nz/auckland/
Registered: 2012-06-27
Posts: 187

Re: [SOLVED] Login screen changes resolution after a second

Intel, Nouveau and ATI drivers already enable KMS automatically for all chipsets. So you need not install it manually.

I have had this happen on all distros that show the boot process, it doesn't really bother me all that much I have to say. Although it was a bit strange in the beginning, I just put it down to asthetics now and as the boot process only lasts 20 seconds it doesn't really matter.

cfr wrote:

Basically, the entire display goes to pieces like garbled white on black and shifts a lot and then after a noticeable moment, the display resolves into a much higher resolution version and everything settles down.

I used to have a problem with Ubuntu/Debian, where by my screen would randomly flicker for a second and random noise/garbled black and white static would appear until I played with something on screen. Then everything would settle down for a while, the resolution would remain the same though. That's never happened on Arch..


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#9 2012-12-29 02:56:51

cfr
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From: Cymru
Registered: 2011-11-27
Posts: 7,130

Re: [SOLVED] Login screen changes resolution after a second

HungGarTiger wrote:

Intel, Nouveau and ATI drivers already enable KMS automatically for all chipsets. So you need not install it manually.

Yes, but not for early boot. That needs to be enabled manually. (Nothing to install, though.)

HungGarTiger wrote:
cfr wrote:

Basically, the entire display goes to pieces like garbled white on black and shifts a lot and then after a noticeable moment, the display resolves into a much higher resolution version and everything settles down.

I used to have a problem with Ubuntu/Debian, where by my screen would randomly flicker for a second and random noise/garbled black and white static would appear until I played with something on screen. Then everything would settle down for a while, the resolution would remain the same though. That's never happened on Arch..

I should be clear: it happens as part of the boot process - not when the machine is up and running. It always happens at the same point when the nouveau driver is loaded. The reason it changes resolution is because it is switching to a driver which supports the graphics card properly and so I'm getting native resolution after that point but not before. I can't say it bothered or bothers me. The first time it was heart stopping because nothing, nothing was working and I felt I'd tried everything to get the graphics to be bearable but after that it was just part of the boot process and I was always quite pleased to see it because it meant that the graphics driver was loading! (I had trouble getting it to work and ended up having to blacklist stuff or something. Since this was my first install of GNU/Linux, getting it all working on non-ideal hardware was somewhat like being thrown in at the deep end, even though I used Debian. At least, so it felt at the time... People kept telling me to use the nvidia drivers and I kept explaining that I could not do so because they didn't make them for PPC!)

Last edited by cfr (2012-12-29 03:00:58)


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#10 2012-12-29 04:19:09

HungGarTiger
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From: nz/auckland/
Registered: 2012-06-27
Posts: 187

Re: [SOLVED] Login screen changes resolution after a second

cfr wrote:

I should be clear: it happens as part of the boot process - not when the machine is up and running.

I see, well disregard my post then - I won't take the thread offtopic anymore than it has been, but if anybody has experience with the spastic screen garbled nonsense shoot me a pm. I'd be curious to know what the issue actually was.

Going to look more into KMS now

Last edited by HungGarTiger (2012-12-29 04:19:30)


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#11 2012-12-29 04:43:09

NeoZelux
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Registered: 2012-10-28
Posts: 45

Re: [SOLVED] Login screen changes resolution after a second

Ahhh hmm thanks for the clarity guys. Nice to have a better idea of what's going on, I can see now that different graphics cards/hardware would be a likely cause for this kind of stuff. My card probably does have compatibility issues like NVS suggested.

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