Re: How do I find my monitor type and model?

[ahmad]

The way you wrote your question makes me think you've updated your original post, Please do not delete the old content ... just add a new section & call it update.

You may be able to get your monitor configuration by parsing xorg.conf file (Most of the times you'll find it in /etc/X11/xorg.conf ).

[markseger]

sorry about overriding original request, which asked how to get the terminal type/model. When I look at display/hardware settings via the desktop GUI, I clearly see HP LP2465 but if a do a recursive grep of everything in /etc/X11 there's nothing to be found so the data is obviously being pulled from somewhere else. -mark

[afoken]

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_Data_Channel and especially the links at the end of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_display_identification_data.

Without DDC, you can not identify the monitor. This happens for ancient monitors, and for monitor cables that do not connect the required pins. On my desktops at home and at work, the CRT monitors are connected via five BNC jacks, just RGB and H-Sync/V-Sync, no DDC pins. No software running on the PCs can identify the monitors.

How much information you get from the monitor depends on the DDC version implemented by the monitor.

And as a last detail, the graphics card has to be able to talk DDC with the monitor. Ancient VGAs can't do that.

Alexander

[markseger]

I think I've found at least an alternative mechanism. When Xorg runs, it logs this info to /var/log/Xorg.X.log where X is the display number. Perhaps the next step is to look t the source and see how it gets the info it's reporting

[thunders]

I'm running Ubuntu and Gnome, but this should be generally relevant to any system using X11.

I had a look at the source of the Gnome tools that read monitor information. They all use the X RandR (Resize and Rotate) library under the hood to gather monitor information

The xrandr command line tool shows the raw data provided by your monitor

$ xrandr --verbose
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 1024, maximum 1280 x 1024
VGA connected 1280x1024+0+0 (0x3c) normal (normal left inverted right 
+x axis y axis) 338mm x 270mm
    Identifier: 0x3b
    Timestamp:  33753
    Subpixel:   unknown
    Clones:    
    CRTC:       0
    CRTCs:      0 1
    Panning:    0x0+0+0
    Tracking:   0x0+0+0
    Border:     0/0/0/0
    Transform:  1.000000 0.000000 0.000000
                0.000000 1.000000 0.000000
                0.000000 0.000000 1.000000
               filter: 
    EDID_DATA:
        00ffffffffffff0010ac0ba0554a4632
        110f010368221b78eecaf6a357479e23
        114f54a54b00714f8180010101010101
        010101010101302a009851002a403070
        1300520e1100001e000000ff00553439
        333135344b32464a550a000000fc0044
        454c4c204531373346500a20000000fd
        00384b1f500e000a2020202020200099

The EDID_DATA is particularly relevant to us. The read-edid project has utilities that turn the EDID information into something we can use:

$sudo get-edid 2>/dev/null| parse-edid 2>/dev/null| grep ModelName
    

ModelName "DELL E173FP"