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Archives for January 2010

XRANDR Comes to the Rescue

What could be more frustrating than trying to install Ubuntu or Mint on a new CPU, motherboard, with a built-in graphics card and your display goes south. Here’s the scenario, after the initial flash screens, the screen goes blank. It seems that Xorg is using a screen resolution your monitor does not support.

Why is that? So frustrating. So, my older 19 inch Samsung monitor comes to the rescue. It seems to cope better than my 22 inch HPw220h monitor. The initial screen seems to be twice as big as the monitor supports, hence it doesn’t display properly on certain monitors.

There is one trick, well, a fix to make things all right again. XRANDR comes to the rescue. You will need to perform the following to get your Xorg displaying properly.

  • Hit Ctrl-Alt-F1. This will take you to the terminal screen.
  • Type in XRANDR -s 1024×768. This resets the screen a certain size.
  • Hit Ctrl-Alt-F7. This will take you back to XORG.

You can then make the Xorg changes and make it stick. Once I regained my screen, I was able to reconfigure Xorg to the resolution I wanted, 1680×1050 on my HP monitor.

To make my changes stick, I selected Preferences>Display. Say NO when prompted. Logout and Login.

The new Xorg configuration is now set.

Install Linux on USB

Now that I have a new motherboard that supports booting from a USB, installing and booting Linux on a USB should be a reality. This article details how-to install one using a software tool called UNetbootin, but you need a BIOS that’s able to boot from a USB. That’s where my new motherboard comes in the picture. You can also use the USB drive as a rescue drive for Linux. With USB 3.0, there is plenty of promise in the future. It will be so much faster compared to booting from a CD drive. Read the article.

Toyota Sticky Gas Pedal

Here’s the skinny on Toyota’s stick gas pedal problem.

Between 2006 and November 2009, there were a total of 5 deaths and 17 injuries in 13 Toyota vehicle crashes officially confirmed to involve unintended acceleration.

Four of those deaths occurred in a single incident: the August 2009 crash that killed an off-duty California Highway patrolman and his family in a Lexus.

The stuck-pedal recall of 2.3 million vehicles announced last week affects Toyota’s 2009-2010 RAV4, Corolla and Matrix models; the 2005-2010 Avalon; 2010 Highlander; 2007-2010 Tundra and the 2008-2010 Sequoia; and some 2007-2010 Camrys (only those with gas pedal assemblies made by a specific Toyota supplier; your dealer can check). No Lexus or Scion models are involved.

A Toyota spokesman has said that the carmaker is very close to announcing a solution to the issue for cars here in the U.S. Toyota still needs to get regulatory approval for a proposed repair in the U.S. and in Europe before a fix can be made.