(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Hi, I've been trying to find out how to get the screen to rotate on an old laptop running Puppy 4.2. I have tried the windows shortcuts being Alt+Ctl+Arrow key to no avail. I have tried using Xrandr in the command line but since I am new to puppy i was unsuccessful. Any insight into my problem would be tremendous. What i am trying to do is mount the laptop under a desk to use as a music jukebox. I have installed songbird and everything is great except i cannot find out how to get the screen to rotate 180 degrees. Please help
Thanks

Assuming your graphics driver supports it.

@ disciple
I have tried doing this several times. I get an error message-

X Error of failed request: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
Major opcode of failed request: 153 (RANDR)
Minor opcode of failed request: 2 (RRSetScreenConfig)
Serial number of failed request: 12
Current serial number in output stream: 12

I am not too sure what this is trying to tell me or how to fix it. Thanks for any input I'll try whatever. Is there any other way to get the screen to invert? If i tried this command in XVESA would it work?

Your video controller must be capable of performing rotations and inversions. In a terminal, type 'xrandr'. You should get something like below:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 1024, maximum 1280 x 1200
VGA-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right)
DVI-0 connected 1280x1024+0+0 (normal left inverted right) 338mm x 270mm
1280x1024 60.0*+ 75.0 59.9
1152x864 75.0
1024x768 75.1 70.1 60.0
832x624 74.6
800x600 72.2 75.0 60.3
640x480 75.0 72.8 60.0
720x400 70.1
S-video disconnected (normal left inverted right)

If the information about (normal left inverted right) is not present, your video board does not support those functions.

If it does, the correct syntax is 'xrandr -o [normal, left right, inverted]'

BS

@ravensnest

That is correct. I get that screen however the only information present is pertaining to the screen. nothing about VGA or S-Video. So i guess i'm out of luck?

what i'm trying to recreate is found here
http://bluelinecity.com/projects/kitchenet/

This guy's computer has similar specs CPU & Ram. About the same era computer. I have an Acer Travelmate 737TLV that originally ran Windows 98.

I just changed my video to XVESA. I then ran the same command and the screen goes blank for a minute then comes back on. The terminal error simply says failed to change the screen configuration!

I'm not sure that XVesa supports randr.

I've just tried rotating my screen (in Xorg) and discovered I have the same problem. I have an old Nvidia graphics card that was able to rotate in older Puppies when I compiled the Nvidia drivers myself, but it won't rotate now using an Nvidia .pet. So either the .pet is faulty or xrandr or something in Puppy is faulty. I'll try compiling the drivers to see which it is.

Xrandr will list whatever video ports your board supports. Mine has DVI, VGA, and S-video outputs, all of which are capable of inverting and rotating the image.

Once again, if you do not see the info (normal inverted right left), your board is NOT capable of those functions.

I have successfully rotated the screen in XVESA. I first set up XVESA using 1024x768x24 and the command failed. The desktop however presented normally. I then reran the XVESA wizard and used 1024x768x16 settings. After i did this the screen flipped nicely for me. Is there a way to automate this command so i don't have to every time on startup. I'm not sure if im going to need to invert the mouse.
Thanks

Once again, if you do not see the info (normal inverted right left), your board is NOT capable of those functions

No; your board as currently set up in Puppy is not capable of them
Like I said, I have a card (well actually more than one) that can rotate... but I can't currently get it to in Puppy.
BTW an update: I tried compiling the Nvidia drivers myself again today, but I can't figure out how to install the kernel source the way they want... I put it in /usr/src, but then it complains about not being able to find the kernel config... when I point it to that it complains that it can't tell what kernel version it was for

Is there a way to automate this command so i don't have to every time on startup.

Put it in a script in /root/Startup
You can actually add it as an setting in xorg.conf, but I can't remember exactly how and where. Can anyone remember if doing that automatically rotates the mouse as well?

@ disciple
I actually was successful in flipping it i just had to play with the XVesa settings. It is working fine for me now. Thanks for the advice on the startup issue. Any particular place i need to place that command?

Not sure this works, but you probably could just ad the command to your .xinitrc.
If it fails you have to change back the xinitrc from the commandline- so be sure you remember the name of your commandline text editor.

Cheers,
Christian

thanks zenfunk i'll try that
Anybody have any suggestions on inverting the mouse?

Weird. Before when I installed the nvidia .pet I got this: I think even if I added to the device section of xorg.conf
Now if I add that it works.
Also, this didn't work: Now it does, and both ways rotate the mouse to match the screen. Unfortunately it disables running xrandr

One of the posts said if xrandr gives me the command then my graphics card should support rotation. I see the options, but xrandr -o left only gives me a blank screen. Any ideas?