vesa module's name for its exposed video port?

[Adam Jackson]

On Thu, 2018-09-06 at 16:39 +0000, mail at crcomp.net wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> A grep of Xorg.0.log [1] seems to indicate that only the vesa driver is
> loaded and then used by X on my PC.
>     On the other hand, when the intel driver loads on my laptop with an 
> external VGA port, the intel driver uses VGA as the name for the exposed 
> port. You can then use Identifier "VGA" [2] to override the EDID, which 
> the X probe returns.
>     What's the name that the vesa module uses for its exposed video
> port? (It's the vesa port name that needs to appear in xorg.conf in
> order to force a mode.) 

This is misguided in a couple of ways. The automatic matching of
Monitor sections by output name is only done for RANDR-1.2-capable
drivers, which vesa is not. For vesa-like drivers, if there's only one
Monitor section in the config file, it will be used (iirc). Otherwise,
one names the monitor whatever one wants, and simply names it again in
the Device section to bind the two together, a la:

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier "Spartacus"
	# ...
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier "default"
	Driver "vesa"
	Monitor "Spartacus"
EndSection

That said: vesa, among its many other limitations, can't set arbitrary
modes. If the mode isn't pre-programmed into the video BIOS, it's not
available, and no amount of xorg.conf is going to save you. The
complete X log would give more clues about what modes are available and
why you're not getting the ones you want, but you're almost certainly
better off figuring out why the intel driver isn't working for you
(which the X log probably also has some hints about).

- ajax