Mirroring gnu/Linux screens on command line

It's my turn on stage. Smiling broadly I walk over to the stage with my computer. I worked hard on my slide-deck and pre-loaded all the webpages just in case the Internet connectivity failed. Connect my computer with a VGA cable to the projector and realize that I need to mirror my screen. So that the audience could see my computer screen on projector. That should be easy to do. So I open my computers display settings on Gnome control center and hunt for the 'mirror the screens' option. I can feel scores of eyes follow my every move. There is no option to mirror the display screens, I break into a cold sweat. I regret not saying a prayer to the demo gods.

Miracles happens, my fellow presenter Yang was my guardian angel. He had one trick up his shelve. He took the computer and typed this magic command into the terminal.

xrandr --output VGA1 --same-as LVDS1

That worked! I wipe the sweat and thank Yang profusely. Now it's show time.

Start X Painlessly

Perhaps I should start this post in V. S. Naipaul style with a dedication 'To Sajith for asking me why' ;). Watching over my shoulder while I was working on my laptop, he asking me why I used this particular command to start the X Window server.

$ openvt startx

As command line junkie I work on linux console most of the time, only starting graphical X server with startx command when needed. The problem with using startx command is that it locks up the terminal by printing numerous warnings and messages while the X server starts and thus making the terminal unusable. Also I limit the number of virtual terminal on my computer to just two instead of standard six on gnu/Linux operation system.

So, the openvt command provided by the console-tools package helps me spawn a new virtual terminal and that's where all the warning and messages are printed leaving me to continue working in peace. Another added advantage to this is that I can do startx from a Emacs shell instance too, this is neat!.

Unkown i810 Display Problem

When shutdown is initiated from a X window session my old HP Pavilion desktop turns green and barfs all over me. If you know a fix, shout it out.

Update: Mis-spelled word "Unkown" in the title of this post, leaving it uncorrected since it will mess up the url of the post.