Changing Embedded UI Resolution from the Linux Command Line

How can I change the resolution of my Embedded UI display on my NI Linux Real-Time controller from the command line of the cRIO?

To make this change from the command line, connect to the Linux shell  and then read on to configure the resolution of the embedded UI.

Step 1: Configure Environment Variables

First, you need to set the DISPLAY environment variable to point to the X server. To do this, type export DISPLAY=:0 into the command line. Now that the system knows where to find the X server, we can use the xrandr command to make changes to our display settings.

If you would like to see a list of all detected outputs, you can type xrandr. Note that doing this will return an error if you don't update the DISPLAY environment variable first.

Step 2: Create a Display Mode 

Let's say that your monitor hardware has a display resolution of 1024x768.  In order to display the embedded UI in this resolution, we need to create a display mode for this resolution. The xrandrcommand needs to be provided a mode list, which is a series of arguments which define the screen resolution, refresh rate, DPI, and other flags. 

Sometimes, your display's manual will document compatible mode lists. If it doesn't, you will need to generate one. Fortunately, there is another command line utility called cvt which can calculate a mode line given a desired horizontal and vertical resolution. To continue with our example, to acquire a mode line for our 1024x768 resolution display, you would type cvt 1024 768. This results in the following output:

Now that you have a valid arguments for the resolution you've chosen, you need to actually create a mode line in Xfce. You can do this by calling xrandr --newmode <modeline> where <modeline> corresponds to the output of the cvt command. Note that the result includes a string contained in quotes. This is the name of the mode line, so you can replace this with whatever name you choose. Using the output from our example (except for the word Modeline at the beginning), and the name "NewMode", this is what this should look like:

You can confirm the addition was successful by calling xrandr again. You should see your new mode under the VIRTUAL1 disconnected display port section.

Step 3: Enable New Mode

Now you need to add your mode as an option under your display port, which is identified as DP1 by default. You can do this by typing xrandr --addmode <display_port> <mode_name>. So, for the mode NewMode, you would type xrandr --addmode DP1 NewMode. Calling xrandr again will reveal that the mode now appears under DP1.

To enable your new mode, you must call xrandr --output <display_port> --mode <mode_name>. Assuming you have a monitor set up with your controller, you will now see the changes take effect. However, these changes will not be persistent upon reboot. If you are satisfied with the results of your change, continue this procedure to make these changes persistent.

Step 4: Make Changes Persistent

The steps above only make changes to the current session and will be lost upon restarting your system. To make sure these settings are applied upon reboot, you need to add these configuration commands to .bashrc, a script file that resides in the home directory of every user. Embedded UI executes under the lvuser user account, so in this case we will be making changes to the .bashrc file located at /home/lvuser/.bashrc. You can use a command-line text editor or you can transfer the file to your local machine, make the necessary changes, and transfer it back to the target . 

If you wanted to make the changes made by the display mode NewMode, the addition to your file might look something like this:

#code for init of custom res
export DISPLAY=:0
xrandr --newmode "NewMode" 63.50 1024 1072 1176 1328  768 771 775 798 -hsync +vsync
xrandr --addmode DP1 NewMode
xrandr --output DP1 --mode NewMode

Save your changes and reboot your controller. It will now boot up using your custom resolution.

If after modifying the .bashrc the resolution is still not displaying correctly it could be because the desktop environment has not fully started by the time the script gets run. Another option would be to run the aforementioned piece of the script as a UI (Xfce) start-up app.

1. Create a sh file on the /usr/local/bin/setresolution.sh
2. Copy the script described above
3. Make sure that the first line is #!/bin/sh (see example below)
4. #!/bin/sh
   export DISPLAY=:0
   xrandr --newmode "NewMode" 63.50 1024 1072 1176 1328  768 771 775 798 -hsync +vsync
   xrandr --addmode DP1 NewMode
   xrandr --output DP1 --mode NewMode
5. Make the script executable with: chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/setresolution.sh
6. Create an Xfce autostart shortcut for it:
   • On the target via Embedded UI go to Settings->Session and Startup->Application Autostart
   • Click Add and populate the relevant fields. The important one is "Command" which should point to /usr/local/bin/setresolution.sh
7. This will create '.desktop' file under '/home/lvuser/.config/autostart' which will launch the script when the desktop environment starts (but not before).

Additional Information