From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1Rozln-00025O-HT for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:55:51 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id ED4A9E0AED; Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:55:41 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-ww0-f53.google.com (mail-ww0-f53.google.com [74.125.82.53]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 071CCE0A91 for ; Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:54:37 +0000 (UTC) Received: by wgbdr12 with SMTP id dr12so905264wgb.10 for ; Sun, 22 Jan 2012 07:54:37 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type; bh=LeZjSXTtauBVBW53VyqBL6NOzYlLsERv5H558N6g9V0=; b=IKV3jQVZWFTFnnSeXMEjLfPFl64GQ6+gtYcAC3mxIAohBVGQt0K2Vtj6tBsmm1lvHz s1N7Ly2lOYK+UUbrZThEw1JdTbPpY+mogUTEE6MQJan0EAqrfGFcFHwbM1uvkjH8zK8/ 2jP5AtOq9cL7uqulHI1bELgZ4hn6mVGuQzMTo= Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.180.91.201 with SMTP id cg9mr8049468wib.15.1327247677285; Sun, 22 Jan 2012 07:54:37 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.223.160.73 with HTTP; Sun, 22 Jan 2012 07:54:37 -0800 (PST) Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2012 07:54:37 -0800 Message-ID: Subject: [gentoo-user] KVM problems - anyone know _why_ it happens? From: Mark Knecht To: Gentoo User Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 X-Archives-Salt: 62156d85-b437-4dd8-9643-e022108c6e01 X-Archives-Hash: 0766584f5cb107011d9a45b80869809c I've seen reports for years about folks having problems with some KVMs under Linux. I've never personally had one myself. However I've been helping a Windows friend break his Redmond addiction over the last few months using Gentoo. He has a nice 3 monitor KDE-based system that's been working fine but there was one monitor that refused to set up with the right resolution. We left it alone for a long time as it was usable but finally yesterday got together to figure out what was happening. From the title it should be clear that the problem was a KVM hooked to that one monitor. Removing the KVM completely solved the problem. Now, what I'm wondering is why this same video card/KVM/monitor combination which apparently worked in Windows should have any problems in Linux? Anyone know why? In the spirit of full discloser I don't really know that this _specific_ video card was tested in Windows, but he owns multiple NVidia 8400GS cards and it's my understanding that other 8400GS cards did work with this KVM & monitor, so unless it's this specific card having a defect, or even being just a bit weak in some way, it would seem to be the insertion of the KVM itself that upset things. Looking at the monitor's specs/requirements for running the higher resolutions it uses, as should not be a surprise, higher frequencies to do higher resolutions. If the KVM was filtering those a bit then it's possible things wouldn't work, but that doesn't explain why it did work in Windows. Basically, I looked around in Google for anyone that had real info about why this problem occurs, couldn't find any that made sense, and am wondering how to choose a KVM that's going to work out of the box short of asking for model numbers, etc. Cheers, Mark