Monitor out of range

I was running a live cd and was getting monitor out of range on my old CPU with Samsung Monitor.
I browsed through the net and found several solution like adding vesa 800X600 or GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480 to the grub.
But none of these worked. Finally I found the solution and it is quite simple. Add "nomodeset" to the grub options.

If the grub boot command looks like this:

linux /vmlinuz-3.6.7-4.fc16.x86_64 root=UUID=0572d37f-cce7-4626-970d-e8d9b0fd5cc4 ro rd.md=0 rd.lvm=0 rd.dm=0 KEYTABLE=us quiet SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 rhgb rd.luks=0 LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Add nomodeset after vmlinuz

linux /vmlinuz-3.6.7-4.fc16.x86_64 nomodeset root=UUID=0572d37f-cce7-4626-970d-e8d9b0fd5cc4 ro rd.md=0 rd.lvm=0 rd.dm=0 KEYTABLE=us quiet SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 rhgb rd.luks=0 LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Press enter to boot.

It works for fedora/ubuntu. And should work for other distros as well.

Upside down skype video on Fedora 14 64bit

Yes that happens on my laptop:

Laptop: Asus K40AB
Web-cam: Chicony CNF7129

It seems Asus mounted the camera upside down in the laptop. The windows driver internally inverts the image and displays it.

Here's a simple trick that I learnt from the ubuntu forums.
If you run skype with:

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/skype

It fixes the issue. But running it that way always isn't a fun.

There are two things to fix this situation:

1. The boring way: Create a shortcut on the desktop, with the above line as the executing application. This fixes the issue for only one user and cannot be invoked by the run command.

2. The fun way:
i. Log in to the super user

$ su

Enter the password
ii. Go to /usr/bin

# cd /usr/bin

iii. Rename skype to skype.main

# mv skype skype.main

iv. Create a new file skype with the below content:
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/skype.main

# echo "LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/skype.main" > skype

v. Make the new skype executable

# chmod 755 skype

And you are done. Now running skype will call the above script which has a fix thus the video is displayed correctly.

Still facing an issue? Post a comment.

Update: having issues with LD_PRELOAD, check updated article on my new blog here.