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How to set console resolution

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During boot my console switches to an unreadable font size. There is a TV attached via a video converter so the video card supports resolutions that the TV won’t (the system is a media centre).

I only have to use the console when troubleshooting something so I don’t need unicode, special characters or other fancy stuff. I would be more than happy with just a plain old CGA console (80x25 with built-in fonts).

There are number of packages that seem to do something with the console: console-setup, console-common, console-data and console-tools that all have their own config file.

I’ve added vga=0x301 to the kernel config through grub and the font is readable until something changes it to tiny letters during boot.

Any idea how to get my CGA fonts back?
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2 answers

1

helmut [ Editor ]

I am sorry to tell you this: In the long run you will simply not be able to use your plain old CGA console. More and more X11 video drivers are switching to kernel mode setting. The corresponding in-kernel drivers will then use the framebuffer. For nouveau and intel this has already happened. You simply cannot use these drivers without using the framebuffer.

So one question remains open: How to change the font with the framebuffer? Maybe someone else can step in here? It seems noteworthy that there is a package called fbset.

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arthur de jong
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Perhaps I should clarify: I don’t care much about CGA but mainly the font size. The BIOS starts up with standard 80x25 characters per screen which is readable enough. All attempts so far with fbset and other console tools ended up with the same font size and a smaller used are of the screen (not the 80x25 I was looking for ;) ).

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0

oz123 [ Editor ]

Maybe try something else from this table ?


     | 640x480  800x600  1024x768 1280x1024
----+-------------------------------------
256 |  0x301   0x303    0x305    0x307
32k |  0x310   0x313    0x316    0x319
64k |  0x311   0x314    0x317    0x31A
16M |  0x312   0x315    0x318    0x31B

Also, can you post here your boot log ? This will help...


Also please do:
                         sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

and choose on the before last question -

                  Do not change the boot/kernel font                 

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0

arthur de jong

Thanks, I’ve reconfigured console-setup but it doesn’t help.


I think it happens pretty early in the boot sequence (long before the “Setting console screen modes and fonts.” and “Setting up console font and keymap” messages), perhaps already in the initrd. 

Mon Dec 27 20:41:54 2010: .
Mon Dec 27 20:41:54 2010: Setting parameters of disc: (none).
Mon Dec 27 20:41:54 2010: Invalidating stale software suspend images... done.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:54 2010: Setting hostname to 'stipper'...done.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:54 2010: Setting preliminary keymap...done.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:54 2010: Activating swap:swapon on /dev/stipper/swap
Mon Dec 27 20:41:54 2010: swapon: /dev/stipper/swap: stat failed: No such file or directory
Mon Dec 27 20:41:54 2010:  ^[[33m(warning).^[[39;49m
Mon Dec 27 20:41:54 2010: Will now check root file system:fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2
Mon Dec 27 20:41:54 2010: [/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /] fsck.ext3 -y -C0 /dev/mapper/stipper-root 
Mon Dec 27 20:41:54 2010: e2fsck 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
Mon Dec 27 20:41:54 2010: /dev/mapper/stipper-root: clean, 122214/655360 files, 1014515/2621440 blocks
Mon Dec 27 20:41:54 2010: .
Mon Dec 27 20:41:54 2010: Cleaning up ifupdown....
Mon Dec 27 20:41:54 2010: Setting up networking....
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: Loading kernel module loop.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: Loading kernel module sbp2.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: Loading kernel module speedstep-centrino.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: FATAL: Error inserting speedstep_centrino (/lib/modules/2.6.35-rc5-686/kernel/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/cpufreq/speedstep-centrino.ko): No such device
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: Loading kernel module i2c-i801.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: Loading kernel module eeprom.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: Loading kernel module pca9540.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: FATAL: Module pca9540 not found.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: Loading kernel module w83627ehf.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: FATAL: Error inserting w83627ehf (/lib/modules/2.6.35-rc5-686/kernel/drivers/hwmon/w83627ehf.ko): Device or resource busy
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: Loading kernel module coretemp.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: Loading kernel module lirc_i2c.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: FATAL: Module lirc_i2c not found.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: Setting up LVM Volume Groups  Reading all physical volumes.  This may take a while...
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010:   Found volume group "stipper" using metadata type lvm2
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010:   5 logical volume(s) in volume group "stipper" now active
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: .
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: Will now activate lvm and md swap:swapon on /dev/mapper/stipper-swap
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: swapon: /dev/mapper/stipper-swap: found swap signature: version 1, page-size 4, same byte order
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: swapon: /dev/mapper/stipper-swap: pagesize=4096, swapsize=4294967296, devsize=4294967296
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: done.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: Will now check all file systems.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: Checking all file systems.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: [/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /boot] fsck.ext3 -y -C0 /dev/sda1 
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: e2fsck 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: /dev/sda1: clean, 255/622592 files, 90761/2490067 blocks
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: [/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /var/lib/mythtv] fsck.ext3 -y -C0 /dev/mapper/stipper-mythtv 
Mon Dec 27 20:41:55 2010: e2fsck 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
Mon Dec 27 20:41:56 2010: /dev/mapper/stipper-mythtv: clean, 17232/49872896 files, 188194472/199491584 blocks
Mon Dec 27 20:41:56 2010: [/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /var/lib/mldonkey] fsck.ext3 -y -C0 /dev/mapper/stipper-mldonkey 
Mon Dec 27 20:41:56 2010: e2fsck 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
Mon Dec 27 20:41:56 2010: /dev/mapper/stipper-mldonkey: clean, 823/1310720 files, 1636616/5242880 blocks
Mon Dec 27 20:41:56 2010: [/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /var/lib/sabnzbdplus] fsck.ext3 -y -C0 /dev/mapper/stipper-sabnzbdplus 
Mon Dec 27 20:41:56 2010: e2fsck 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
Mon Dec 27 20:41:56 2010: /dev/mapper/stipper-sabnzbdplus: clean, 1596/1638400 files, 2396833/6553600 blocks
Mon Dec 27 20:41:56 2010: [/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /share/disk1] fsck.ext3 -y -C0 /dev/sdc1 
Mon Dec 27 20:41:56 2010: [/sbin/fsck.ext3 (2) -- /share/disk2] fsck.ext3 -y /dev/sdd1 
Mon Dec 27 20:41:56 2010: e2fsck 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
Mon Dec 27 20:41:56 2010: e2fsck 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
Mon Dec 27 20:41:57 2010: /dev/sdc1: clean, 13150/45793280 files, 172307068/183143000 blocks
Mon Dec 27 20:41:57 2010: /dev/sdd1: clean, 7293/122052608 files, 126061751/488205301 blocks
Mon Dec 27 20:41:58 2010: Done checking file systems. A log is being saved in /var/log/fsck/checkfs if that location is writable..
Mon Dec 27 20:41:58 2010: Will now mount local filesystems:.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:58 2010: Will now activate swapfile swap:swapon on /dev/mapper/stipper-swap
Mon Dec 27 20:41:58 2010: swapon: /dev/mapper/stipper-swap: found swap signature: version 1, page-size 4, same byte order
Mon Dec 27 20:41:58 2010: swapon: /dev/mapper/stipper-swap: pagesize=4096, swapsize=4294967296, devsize=4294967296
Mon Dec 27 20:41:58 2010: swapon: /dev/mapper/stipper-swap: swapon failed: Device or resource busy
Mon Dec 27 20:41:58 2010: ^[[31mfailed.^[[39;49m
Mon Dec 27 20:41:58 2010: Cleaning up temporary files...Cleaning /tmp...done.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:58 2010: .
Mon Dec 27 20:41:58 2010: Checking minimum space in /tmp...done.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:58 2010: Configuring network interfaces...done.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:59 2010: Starting portmap daemon....
Mon Dec 27 20:41:59 2010: Starting NFS common utilities: statd idmapd.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:59 2010: Cleaning up temporary files....
Mon Dec 27 20:41:59 2010: Setting up ALSA...done.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:59 2010: Setting console screen modes and fonts.
Mon Dec 27 20:41:59 2010: ^[]R^[[9;30]^[[14;30]Setting up console font and keymap...done.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:00 2010: Setting up X server socket directory /tmp/.X11-unix....
Mon Dec 27 20:42:00 2010: Setting up ICE socket directory /tmp/.ICE-unix....
Mon Dec 27 20:42:00 2010: Starting filesystem in userspace: fuse.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:00 2010: Setting kernel variables ... /etc/sysctl.conf... /etc/sysctl.d/bindv6only.conf...done.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:00 2010: Initializing random number generator...done.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:00 2010: Setting sensors limits.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:29 2010: INIT: Entering runlevel: 2
Mon Dec 27 20:42:29 2010: Using makefile-style concurrent boot in runlevel 2.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:29 2010: Starting portmap daemon...Already running..
Mon Dec 27 20:42:29 2010: Starting NFS common utilities: statd idmapd.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:29 2010: Not starting fancontrol; run pwmconfig first. ... ^[[33m(warning).^[[39;49m
Mon Dec 27 20:42:30 2010: Exporting directories for NFS kernel daemon....
Mon Dec 27 20:42:30 2010: Starting NFS kernel daemon: nfsd mountd.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:30 2010: Starting enhanced syslogd: rsyslogd.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:30 2010: Starting acpi_fakekey daemon...done.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:30 2010: Checking battery state...done.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:31 2010: Starting ACPI services....
Mon Dec 27 20:42:31 2010: Starting anac(h)ronistic cron: anacron.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:31 2010: Starting SABnzbd+ binary newsgrabber:.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:34 2010: Starting web server: apache2.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:35 2010: Starting deferred execution scheduler: atd.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:35 2010: Starting atop system monitor: atop.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:35 2010: Starting periodic command scheduler: cron.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:35 2010: Starting system message bus: dbus.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:36 2010: Starting Hardware abstraction layer: hald.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:37 2010: Starting disk temperature monitoring daemon: hddtemp:Starting MD monitoring service: mdadm --monitor.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:37 2010:   /dev/sda /dev/sdb.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:38 2010: Loading LIRC modules:.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:38 2010: Starting remote control daemon(s) : LIRC : ^[[31mfailed!^[[39;49m
Mon Dec 27 20:42:38 2010: Starting remote control mouse daemon : LIRCMD :lircmd: could not connect to socket
Mon Dec 27 20:42:38 2010: lircmd: No such file or directory
Mon Dec 27 20:42:38 2010:  ^[[31mfailed!^[[39;49m
Mon Dec 27 20:42:38 2010: Starting NTP server: ntpd.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:39 2010: Loading cpufreq kernel modules...done (acpi-cpufreq).
Mon Dec 27 20:42:40 2010: Starting OpenBSD Secure Shell server: sshd.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:40 2010: CPUFreq Utilities: Setting ondemand CPUFreq governor...CPU0...CPU1...done.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:43 2010: Starting MySQL database server: mysqld ..
Mon Dec 27 20:42:43 2010: Checking for corrupt, not cleanly closed and upgrade needing tables..
Mon Dec 27 20:42:43 2010: Starting S.M.A.R.T. daemon: smartd.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:43 2010: Starting MythTV server: mythbackend .
Mon Dec 27 20:42:47 2010: Enabling laptop mode...done (enabled, not active).
Mon Dec 27 20:42:48 2010: Starting Munin-Node: done.
Mon Dec 27 20:42:48 2010: Running local boot scripts (/etc/rc.local).
Mon Dec 27 20:42:48 2010:
NN comments
oz123
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, Please … dont put more answers… it’s not a forum. Rather put your “answer” as another comment on the thread. Can you tell WHEN the resolution is changing ? At which part ? Run level 1 or run level 2? Besides that, your log shows many errors … Which graphics card do you have ? this could be related …

arthur de jong
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I see you have to log in to post a comment (you can ask questions and post answers without logging in which is a bit confusing)

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