Last night we had one of our twice- or three-times-weekly electrical blackouts and, while the gadgets are all on uninterruptible power supplies I shut them down before the juice was gone from the backups. When this morning I rebooted the GPD Pocket, it went to the TDM login screen, where the spaces for entering username and password were small but the fonts for typing them in were huge. Nevertheless, I was able to log in and, instead of the pristine TDE desktop I'd enjoyed at shutdown, I had one where Kicker and so on were the size I had set, but again the fonts -- in the calendar, in names below icons, and in menus, were enormous.
My sense is that something upstream of TDM is doing this. The Ubuntu install defaults to Unity and lightdm. When I installed the two big TDE packages I set TDM as the default. But of course I'd had to run Unity in order to install TDE.
My first thought is to purge Unity and lightdm, but it might be that this won't solve the problem, and that someone here who is familiar with the macinations of X and such might have a sense of where there's a configuration file that is causing this to happen.
Anybody know?
Thanks.
dep
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dep composed on 2018-06-28 13:25 (UTC-0400):
Last night we had one of our twice- or three-times-weekly electrical blackouts and, while the gadgets are all on uninterruptible power supplies I shut them down before the juice was gone from the backups. When this morning I rebooted the GPD Pocket, it went to the TDM login screen, where the spaces for entering username and password were small but the fonts for typing them in were huge. Nevertheless, I was able to log in and, instead of the pristine TDE desktop I'd enjoyed at shutdown, I had one where Kicker and so on were the size I had set, but again the fonts -- in the calendar, in names below icons, and in menus, were enormous.
My sense is that something upstream of TDM is doing this. The Ubuntu install defaults to Unity and lightdm. When I installed the two big TDE packages I set TDM as the default. But of course I'd had to run Unity in order to install TDE.
My first thought is to purge Unity and lightdm, but it might be that this won't solve the problem, and that someone here who is familiar with the macinations of X and such might have a sense of where there's a configuration file that is causing this to happen.
Anybody know?
What are output from
inxi -G -c0 xrdb -query | grep dpi
On June 28, 2018 1:37 PM, Felix Miata mrmazda@earthlink.net wrote:
What are output from
inxi -G -c0
Graphics: Card: Intel Atom/Celeron/Pentium Processor x5-E0000/J3xxx/N3xxx Series PCI Configuration Registers Display Server: X.org 11.19.5 driver: intel tty size: 120x37 Advanced Data: N/A out of X
xrdb -query | grep dpi
xrdb: Can't open display
The plot thickens. I purged both lightdm and unity, and from the TDE login screen chose console login. from there is did startx -- and what came up was something that I suppose was Unity: top of acreen at left it had the word "Activities", had some application icons down the left side, and at top right it had some small icons. What is this and how do I make it go away?
dep
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dep composed on 2018-06-28 14:08 (UTC-0400):
On June 28, 2018 1:37 PM, Felix Miata wrote:
xrdb -query | grep dpi
xrdb: Can't open display
Must be run from an X session.
On Thursday 28 June 2018 12:25:08 pm dep wrote:
My first thought is to purge Unity and lightdm, but it might be that this won't solve the problem, and that someone here who is familiar with the macinations of X and such might have a sense of where there's a configuration file that is causing this to happen.
Anybody know?
Specifics of X are outside my KB, but you could try reinstalling TDE to get the configs back.:
# apt install --reinstall kubuntu-default-settings-trinity kubuntu-desktop-trinity
Downside is you lose anything you've custom configured :(
It's also possible, as those are meta packages, that you'll need to
# aptitude show kubuntu-default-settings-trinity kubuntu-desktop-trinity
and then individually --reinstall select package(s).
If you're willing to --reinstall the whole box, there's Google posts on how to do that with Ubuntu.
Post Script on power outs: I've found it best to always (even if it's said it's not needed) to do all my config changes, then do a reboot to 'lock' them in. IDK, disk caching?, but I've seen enough similar behavior (crash, even days later, and configs are odd upon re-start) that I'd rather waste the 5 minutes for the reboot than go digging back into xyz to re-find out how to set up something.
Best, Michael
the issue is the presence of frigging gnome, i believe. how can i be rid of this contagion and all its friends and relatives?
dep
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dep composed on 2018-06-28 14:16 (UTC-0400):
the issue is the presence of frigging gnome, i believe. how can i be rid of this contagion and all its friends and relatives?
I install including
tasks=standard base-installer/install-recommends=false
on installation kernel cmdline, and get none of Gnome or GTK until installing Firefox or something else that depends on GTK3.
On Thursday 28 June 2018 11:37:37 Felix Miata wrote:
dep composed on 2018-06-28 14:16 (UTC-0400):
the issue is the presence of frigging gnome, i believe. how can i be rid of this contagion and all its friends and relatives?
I install including
tasks=standard base-installer/install-recommends=false
on installation kernel cmdline, and get none of Gnome or GTK until installing Firefox or something else that depends on GTK3.
Did you try the command tasksel ?
Then all your desktops and other items come up, printer, etc. You check what install (or to leave installed), whatever is unchecked will be removed.
TDE, if installed, will be on that list.
Bill
It's nice to know how people install and obscure commands they run when installing and such; it would also be nice if that thread were to spin off on its own and i might be allowed to keep this one on its original subject.
i was able to kind of force some things by finding my way to trinity control center and setting it to 120dpi (and, in another test, 96dpi), which has made everything very tiny indeed.
i ran xdpyinfo | -B2 resolution and got surprising results:
dimensions: 1920x1200 pixels (96x60 millimeters) resolution: 508x508 dots per inch
the screen is 6 inches across and nearly 4 inches tall, and the resolution ought to be 323 dpi or thereabouts.
oddly, even after forcing the font resolution to 120 dpi, the login screen is of peculiar and disordered, mostly large, font size, with small fields for username and password -- looks pretty weird. i have made photographs of the login screen and the tde desktop, showing the extreme tininess of the kmenu, though icons and kicker are of the correct size. windows and applications remain very small.
the two pictures show the situation better than i can explain it; together they total ~100k. if it is permissible and it seems of any use, i'll attach them to a follow-up message, but did not want to do that if anyone objects.
very weird. it seems to me that if there is a place where i can set the actual screen resolution, 323 dpi, everything ought to work, but i wouldn't bet my life on it.
does anyone here know X?
dep
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dep composed on 2018-06-28 16:48 (UTC-0400):
It's nice to know how people install and obscure commands they run when installing and such; it would also be nice if that thread were to spin off on its own and i might be allowed to keep this one on its original subject.
i was able to kind of force some things by finding my way to trinity control center and setting it to 120dpi (and, in another test, 96dpi), which has made everything very tiny indeed.
i ran xdpyinfo | -B2 resolution and got surprising results:
'tdecmshell xserver' and TDE Control Center > peripherals > information > xserver use xdpyinfo for their reports. Not every app obeys the density that xdpyinfo reports. Xft.dpi is often why.
dimensions: 1920x1200 pixels (96x60 millimeters) resolution: 508x508 dots per inch
the screen is 6 inches across and nearly 4 inches tall, and the resolution ought to be 323 dpi or thereabouts.
oddly, even after forcing the font resolution to 120 dpi, the login screen is of peculiar and disordered, mostly large, font size, with small fields for username and password -- looks pretty weird. i have made photographs of the login screen and the tde desktop, showing the extreme tininess of the kmenu, though icons and kicker are of the correct size. windows and applications remain very small.
the two pictures show the situation better than i can explain it; together they total ~100k. if it is permissible and it seems of any use, i'll attach them to a follow-up message, but did not want to do that if anyone objects.
very weird. it seems to me that if there is a place where i can set the actual screen resolution, 323 dpi, everything ought to work, but i wouldn't bet my life on it.
does anyone here know X?
There isn't "A" place to set DPI that works across distros, across all applications, and across all DEs.
Setting DPI in TDE desktop settings works by setting a (mainly) GTK knob called Xft.dpi, which when set can be discovered via xrdb -query. Xft.dpi can be set via local or global Xresources, plus however GTK sets it. GTK3 defaults to setting it to 96 when nothing else has explicitly set it, which can be very bad for DEs other than those entirely or largely dependent on GTK3[1].
DPI can also be set via xorg.conf* using "DisplaySize" with FOSS drivers (http://fm.no-ip.com/Share/DisplaySize) or via proprietary setting with NVidia drivers.
-dpi can be used for actual Xorg startup. Where depends on distro.
Xrandr can be used with --dpi or --fbmm in an X or DE startup script.
There may still be something useful here: http://fm.no-ip.com/Auth/dpi-screen-window.html (no longer works as designed with most current browsers) http://fm.no-ip.com/PC/fonts-linux-about.html (not updated in years)
[1] https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=367499 RESOLVED UPSTREAM https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21201 RESOLVED WONTFIX https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=757142 RESOLVED WONTFIX https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1269274 RESOLVED WONTFIX https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=971885 FIXED (only in Leap?) https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1420743 EOL'd (needs update)
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i was able to kind of force some things by finding my way to trinity control center and setting it to 120dpi (and, in another test, 96dpi), which has made everything very tiny indeed.
i ran xdpyinfo | -B2 resolution and got surprising results:
For info, there is already plan for R14.1.0 to add config option for DPI to TDE Control Center, letting the user select the preferred DPI within a range. http://bugs.pearsoncomputing.net/show_bug.cgi?id=2879
Cheers Michele
On Thu, Jun 28, 2018 at 9:39 PM, Michele Calgaro michele.calgaro@yahoo.it wrote:
i was able to kind of force some things by finding my way to trinity control center and setting it to 120dpi >> (and, in another test, 96dpi), which has made everything very tiny indeed. > >> i ran xdpyinfo | -B2 resolution and got surprising results: > For info, there is already plan for R14.1.0 to add config option for DPI to TDE Control Center, letting the user select the preferred DPI within a range. http://bugs.pearsoncomputing.net/show_bug.cgi?id=2879 Cheers Michele
Thanks! As you might guess, I look forward to it!
dep
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On 2018-06-28 20:39:43 Michele Calgaro wrote:
i was able to kind of force some things by finding my way to trinity control center and setting it to 120dpi (and, in another test, 96dpi), which has made everything very tiny indeed.
i ran xdpyinfo | -B2 resolution and got surprising results:
For info, there is already plan for R14.1.0 to add config option for DPI to TDE Control Center, letting the user select the preferred DPI within a range. http://bugs.pearsoncomputing.net/show_bug.cgi?id=2879
Just to assuage my curiosity, do these DPI setting interact in any way with the monitor scan frequencies (and I don't even know if that's irrelevant now that CRTs are history) so that an out-of-range DPI could cause hardware damage?
Leslie
On Thursday 28 June 2018, Michael wrote:
On Thursday 28 June 2018 12:25:08 pm dep wrote:
My first thought is to purge Unity and lightdm, but it might be that this won't solve the problem, and that someone here who is familiar with the macinations of X and such might have a sense of where there's a configuration file that is causing this to happen.
Anybody know?
Specifics of X are outside my KB, but you could try reinstalling TDE to get the configs back.:
# apt install --reinstall kubuntu-default-settings-trinity kubuntu-desktop-trinity
Downside is you lose anything you've custom configured :(
It's also possible, as those are meta packages, that you'll need to
# aptitude show kubuntu-default-settings-trinity kubuntu-desktop-trinity
and then individually --reinstall select package(s).
If you're willing to --reinstall the whole box, there's Google posts on how to do that with Ubuntu.
Post Script on power outs: I've found it best to always (even if it's said it's not needed) to do all my config changes, then do a reboot to 'lock' them in. IDK, disk caching?, but I've seen enough similar behavior (crash, even days later, and configs are odd upon re-start) that I'd rather waste the 5 minutes for the reboot than go digging back into xyz to re-find out how to set up something.
Best, Michael
Michael I do the same thing plus, I do a luckybackup to a dir in my backups dir called "Fast_Restore" and save all of the important files such as share, config etc.
I also use krusader to compress everything to backups.
We also have tons of blackouts here (top of a mountain), but in the last 20 years since I started doing that I have not lost any significant data.
dep...
Once you have everything the way you want it. Just plain old tar your user dir to a backup dir. It might take up a wee bit of space but it will be worth it.
Good luck lad,
Kate
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dep -
Felix Miata -
J Leslie Turriff -
Kate Draven -
Michael -
Michele Calgaro -
William Morder