Changing resolution of CLI

Hi, I'm using FC3 on a Toshiba laptop, and I want to change the resolution of the CLI.

Under Xfree86 there was an option to change it, there was a section defined as:

80x25
80x30
80x40

etc, but in xorg.conf I can't find it.

Basically when my system boots the text is huge, and it is annoying when I drop out of X to the CLI and I feel as if I'm in playschool with all of the huge letters.

Is it possible to fix this easily?


Thanks in advance,
Morrolan

If you are in an xterm, then you can change the font size with <cntrl><right-right-click>

No it's not an xterm, I'm talking bootup and CLI - i.e. when I don't login to a GUI.

Like I said, it was an easy enough problem to fix when everything was XFree86, but since the move to x.org the config file seems to have shrunk drastically.

I found a table on the net which is pretty handy for cli resolutions.

Color depth      |   640x480      800x600      1024x768      1280x1024
256        (8bit)|     769          771           773           775
32000     (15bit)|     784          787           790           793
65000     (16bit)|     785          788           791           794
16.7 Mill.(24bit)|     786          789           792           795

The higher numbers are smaller text.

Just add a selection to the end of your kernel in the grub.conf with the vga of your choice like this....

title Fedora Core
	root (hd1,1)
	kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.10-1.770_FC3 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet vga=790
	initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.10-1.770_FC3.img

Here's something from /Documentation/svga.txt file from the Linux kernel source:

The video mode to be used is selected by a kernel parameter which can be specified in the kernel Makefile (the SVGA_MODE=... line) or by the "vga=..." option of LILO (or some other boot loader you use) or by the "vidmode" utility (present in standard Linux utility packages). You can use the following values of this parameter: NORMAL_VGA - Standard 80x25 mode available on all display adapters. EXTENDED_VGA - Standard 8-pixel font mode: 80x43 on EGA, 80x50 on VGA. ASK_VGA - Display a video mode menu upon startup (see below). 0..35 - Menu item number (when you have used the menu to view the list of modes available on your adapter, you can specify the menu item you want to use). 0..9 correspond to "0".."9", 10..35 to "a".."z". Warning: the mode list displayed may vary as the kernel version changes, because the modes are listed in a "first detected -- first displayed" manner. It's better to use absolute mode numbers instead. 0x.... - Hexadecimal video mode ID (also displayed on the menu, see below for exact meaning of the ID). Warning: rdev and LILO don't support hexadecimal numbers -- you have to convert it to decimal manually.

Combined with what homey provided I hope it'll help.

That looks like what I need, I'll give it a try as soon as I can and let you know!

Cheers!


Morrolan

Prelimary test failed - I set it to 790 and it still booted in what looks like 769 - I will try some other lesser modes tonight.

I wonder if you have the video card and monitor setup properly. If it was my machine, I would run yum update to get the lastest driver info onboard. Then I would run as root user the command:
system-config-display .

The card and monitor are setup fine, I did what you prescribed only last week.

I have solved it now - it obviously didn't like 32,000 colours before the graphics card had been initialised, but setting it to "773" (1024x768x256) works fine.

I did as homey recommended and simply added the parameter onto the end of the kernel line in grub.

One question - will a kernel update detect that, or will I have to add that each time I update my kernel?

A kernel update may fix the problem but I don't think it will put any extra info like that in the grub.conf.