Desktop is bigger than my screen. How do I fix?

[onzey]

A Linux newbie (in the UK), I thought I would experiment with Knoppix 3.2 on this months PCplus covermount( with Knoppix v3.2 2003-05-03 EN.iso). I am booting from the cd I burned and managed to get round flickery screen problems and I have even got modem going so am writing this in Konqueror browser. What I can't figure out is the desktop size. By this I mean as I move cursor to the edges of screen the desktop scrolls a bit in all directions. If I look in control centre > Xdisplay the screen is 640x480 Is this the reason or do I need to configure desktop somehow? I was going to change screen to 1024x768 which is what I use in Windows 98se but it seems you have to restart the session to get changes to take effect but if I shutdown and reboot I am back to square one. Basically I just want the desktop to fit the screen at some resolution (preferably 1024x768). I have tried booting with various options including screen=1024x768 but it seems to make no difference. Also tried fb800x600 but boot stopped (can't remember error now). I have seen references to saving settings to a floppy and booting with that, is that the thing to do? Any help gratefully received. My machine is Athlon 1.2 ,512Mb, 40GbHD, Geoforce 2 mx200 64mb graphics card

[TheCyberDude]

Go here: http://developer.linuxtag.net/knoppix/bootdisks/ and
Download - boot-en.img . Go into Windows and Copy from Knoppix CD
the following files: rawrite2.exe mkfloppy.bat to C:\ .
Also put your boot-en.img in C:\.
Edit the mkfloppy.bat to boot-en.img. Launch the rawrite2.exe in
Windows, this will write an Floppy Boot Disk for Knoppix.
Put Boot Disk in FDD and Knoppix CD in CD-ROM, and set you BIOS to boot from Floppy.
Boot up and Knoppix will load, Hit F2 and enter:
knoppix lang=us desktop=kde screen=1024x768 xvrefresh=60 xserver=XFree86 xmodule=fbdev 5 dma keyboard=us

Maybe this will help, also there is another command: testcd (It Checks CD data integrity) that you can add to above line. I haven't used it.
Also, you can log out - log-in as another user (Chosse - root), to see
if this changes anything.
I'm running an Athlon XP 1600, Maxtor 40GB, GeForce 2 -MX400
(64MB), 256MB - with no troubles. I have an old monitor, an it was hard to get screen size set-up.
The screen=1024x768 xvrefresh=60 did the trick.

[TheCyberDude]

One other thing, try this:

Go into an Konsole in Knoppix, type su <Your Password>
and kxconfig. It brings up Advanced XFree86 Configuration to help
in setting up Monitor|Graphic Gard|etc..
GeForce 2 MX-400 is an NV11.

[onzey]

Thanks for the posts Cyberdude. I thought I would give those boot options a try booting straight from my cd i.e.

knoppix lang=us desktop=kde screen=1024x768 xvrefresh=60 xserver=XFree86 xmodule=fbdev 5 dma keyboard=us

and I got a 1024x768 screen no problem! Thanks for the help.

Just for information to anybody I am using an old 14" monitor. Other specs of my machine are in my first post to which I should add ECS K7S5A motherboard.

CyberDude:
When you say about logout and login again as new user does that only work if I make the floppy as you suggested and then boot from that? At moment when I logout everything terminates and eventually machine shuts down.

However the only other thing I could really do with now is knowing how to save stuff like connection settings for internet/email etc. so I can boot with these things already set up. I will have to search the forums more as I think this issue is already dealt with but if anyone can point me to a good link I would be grateful as I'm pushed for time just now.

Thanks again to The CyberDude

[onzey]

Managed to save settings to floppy and then restore by booting with Knoppix floppyconfig failsafe
as suggested here:

http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=248