Monitor reports "out of range" on login screen in Lucid Beta 1

[Christopher Neville-Smith]

Binary package hint: xorg

Upgraded a Karmic partition of Lucid Beta 1. On selecting this partition in Grub, the monitor goes blank and displays "Out of Range". I have succeeded in getting this working through a complicated and cunning workaround, as follows:

1) Switch to my other computer using my KVM switch before the X display starts up (thereby, I understand, disabling communication between the computer and my Avanhard monitor)

2) Once I hear the login screen sound, switch back and find the menu in a forced 1024×768 resolution.

3) Log in.

4) In System | Monitor | Preferences, set the resolution to 1280×1024 and the frequency to 75 Hz, but not 60 Hz. For some reason, the monitor doesn't like 1280×1024 and 60 Hz and gives an Out of Range message.

So presumably, on bootup the computer communicates with the monitor and incorrectly decides that the optimal settings are 1280×1024 and 60 Hz, when in my case it should be defaulting to 75 Hz. I know there are ways of overriding the default settings manually, but I'm sparing a thought for the newbies who'll never guess what to do.

It might be down to my ATI graphics card which, at best, intermittently throws up this Out of Range problem, but without my workaround it's coming up constantly in Lucid Beta. (Although my older computer with an nvidia card has had intermittent problem to, particularly with duff propriety drivers.)

Anyway, can someone work out what is wrong and fix this? Or, alternatively (as an aside), would it make sense to have an obvious "safe graphical boot" option in GRUB?

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Fri Mar 26 21:01:41 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
DkmsStatus: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
GdmLog1:

InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
MachineType: System manufacturer System Product Name
Package: xorg 1:7.5+3ubuntu1
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-17-generic root=UUID=74e0c6f6-e63c-48ee-9907-bec15acc7c71 ro quiet splash
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_GB.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-17.26-generic 2.6.32.10+drm33.1
SourcePackage: xorg
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-17-generic i686
XorgLogOld:

dmi.bios.date: 08/07/2008
dmi.bios.vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 0802
dmi.board.asset.tag: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
dmi.board.name: M2A-MX
dmi.board.vendor: ASUSTeK Computer INC.
dmi.board.version: Rev 1.xx
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: Asset-1234567890
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.chassis.vendor: Chassis Manufacture
dmi.chassis.version: Chassis Version
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvr0802:bd08/07/2008:svnSystemmanufacturer:pnSystemProductName:pvrSystemVersion:rvnASUSTeKComputerINC.:rnM2A-MX:rvrRev1.xx:cvnChassisManufacture:ct3:cvrChassisVersion:
dmi.product.name: System Product Name
dmi.product.version: System Version
dmi.sys.vendor: System manufacturer
system:
 distro: Ubuntu
 codename: lucid
 architecture: i686
 kernel: 2.6.32-17-generic

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

I wonder if this could be a bad-edid issue

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Yeah on second look this definitely appears to be a modesetting issue of some sort. Since in lucid the kernel does modesetting for this hardware, I'm bumping this over to the kernel.

A better workaround for you might be to try turning off KMS (boot with the grub option radeon.modeset=0). That should restore it to however it worked on karmic.

[Christopher Neville-Smith (chris-neville-smith)]

Okay, tried that and it works. Since most newbies won't guess that, however, any chance of a proper fix?

[Christopher Neville-Smith (chris-neville-smith)]

Installed Lucid release candidate, bug gone in default settings. Can I mark this as closed, or should someone else do that?