User with huge screen size

[anakonda]

Hello, I have a strange problem with a user in my Sabayon Install:
when this user logs in he have got an huge resolution (he can see only a little part of the screen) but he can move the mouse around moving the screen. I have already tryed to change resolution from Gnome 3 Settings but with no chance. All other users on my machine haven't got this problem so I think that the problem is in some configuration file.
Hope in your response, thank you in advice.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Sounds like his user account has a virtual screen size specified somewhere. Very odd.

I can tell you a quick work-around until you can find the cause:

If you can press Alt-F2, try entering the following command in the pop-up Run Application window (I'm assuming your monitor is VGA-0. If not, replace accordingly, e.g. LVDS, CRT-0 or whatever) to change the resolution in the current session to what you want (I'm assuming your monitor resolution is 1680x1050. If not, replace accordingly):

Code: Select all

xrandr --output VGA-0 --mode 1680x1050

To make that stick over reboots, you can create a Desktop Configuration File in ~/.config/autostart/ (see e.g. How To: Add startup programs in GNOME 3).

If you can't enter the command on the user's Desktop via Alt-F2, press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get to a VT, log in as the user, and create the above-mentioned Desktop Configuration File using the nano editor.

[anakonda]

It seems that there is some kind of problem even with xrand: it says "Can't open display" and I'm stuck with this virtual resolution problem. I have tryed looking in Gnome configuration files but with no luck.

[Fitzcarraldo]

What is the manufacturer and model of your video card?

[anakonda]

It's an XFX Nvidia Geforce 6200 256MB. But the strange thing is that the other users haven't got this problem.

[Fitzcarraldo]

As I suspected, an NVIDIA GPU. Look for the user's nvidia-settings config file. The locate command is great for finding files. If you don't already have it installed, install sys-apps/mlocate then type updatedb to update its index file. You'll probably find that there's a configuration file in the user's directory with a name like ~/.nvidia-settings* with contents different to the nvidia-settings configuration files for the other users. Probably the best thing to do would be to overwrite the 'bad' configuration file with a 'good' configuration file of another user who does not have the problem. Or just delete the 'bad' configuration file.