xrandr: Can't Open Display

[kwaggawerner]

Hi guys,

I installed Ubuntu 9.10 on a old laptop of mine, it has a VIA P4M800 GPU. The ubuntu installation, livecd, and desktop picked up a maximum resolution of 1600x1200, where as the native display is 1280x800, but if I set it to that resolution, the the display looks severely stretched and unreadable, I suspect it has something to do with the frequencies. However, I was told to use xrandr. No matter what command I run, it tells me it "Can't Open Display". Any Ideas? - Thanks in advance.

lspci:
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. PT890 Host Bridge
00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237/VX700 PCI Bridge
00:06.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
00:0c.0 CardBus bridge: ENE Technology Inc CB1410 Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
00:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South]
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
00:11.6 Communication controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 80)
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 7
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/P4M800 Pro/P4M800 CE/VN800 [S3 UniChrome Pro] (rev 01)

 

[MyWorld]

What do you mean by:

No matter what command I run,

Also, have read the documentation?
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config

 

[kwaggawerner]

trying the old dpkg-reconfigure commands, modifying Xorg.conf, since it doesnt really exist anymore, and so on, uhm, there were a few others. All I want to know why isnt xrandr "detecting" the display....