Centos 7 command line fonts

apolinsky · 05-20-2015, 02:48 PM

I just moved from the nouveau driver which used to crash all X sessions to the Nvidia proprietary driver which is working perfectly in X. Unfortunately much of my work is done at the command line, where the fonts are now ugly, probably the built in original font. How can I reset my configuration to use the nvidia drivers while I am at the command line?

Thank you.

ondoho · 05-21-2015, 02:22 AM

do you mean the font is much bigger now, and slightly fuzzy/distorted?

most probably means that the nvidia driver does not support native console resolution for this card (nouveau however does).

please post output of

Code:

lspci -vk | grep -iA11 vga

inside code tags.

thank you.

btw, nouveau should not be crashing your X-session, but if you are running an extremely heavy desktop environment (unity, kde...) it could refuse to start without hardware accel.

apolinsky · 05-21-2015, 07:44 PM

It has taken awhile to get more information. I've reverted back to the nouveau driver with the most recently release kernel, the 4.2 version. Invoking 'startx' hangs and you have to hard boot the machine. If I choose the prior version, 4.1, the X session will start up, but invoking a menu option will once more freeze the machine and a hard boot is require. All prioor versions of the kernel work properly in both X and at the command line. Using the lspci with the nvidia drivers installed on the most recent (4.2) version gives no vga found. The machine is an HP Proliant computer.

John VV · 05-21-2015, 07:52 PM

using the nvidia driver so you are using the gui

to set the fonts
open a terminal
click on "edit"
and edit profile

the terminal gui has the normal set of gui tools
font
size
color
if the background is solid or transparent
and so on

apolinsky · 05-21-2015, 07:58 PM

John:

Thanks for your suggestion, but setting the fonts in 'terminal' would imply that I was already in an X session, which I normally am not. I use X only when I want to go on the internet.

veerain · 05-22-2015, 04:51 AM

You can use 'setconsole' command to set bigger fonts in console (VT). Also what Nvidia card you are using?

ondoho · 05-22-2015, 02:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by veerain

Also what Nvidia card you are using?

which is why i requested the lspci output.

ohmster · 05-27-2015, 06:14 PM

Hey I get apolinsky's question and need the exact same help and am in the exact same situation. I can supply the information you need/want to assist. I too have an nVidia card and am using the kmod-nvidia drivers. "nouveau" is blacklisted for the nVidia kernel. We both run our machines in run level 3 and only use startx to get to desktop for things like Firefox, etc. But the default is NOT to run x and the normal CLI font is huge and ugly. None of the nice, tight vga fonts we used to have in previous versions of CentOS like 6. "vga=773" does not work anymore in grub.conf.

Code:

[paul@ohmster ~]$ sudo lspci -vk | grep -iA11 vga
04:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G96 [GeForce 9500 GT] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
        Memory at cf000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
        Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
        Memory at cc000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32M]
        I/O ports at e800 [size=128]
        Expansion ROM at cef80000 [disabled] [size=512K]
        Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 3
        Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
        Capabilities: [78] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
        Capabilities: [b4] Vendor Specific Information: Len=14 <?>
        Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel
[paul@ohmster ~]$

I have tried various "tricks" posted to add to /etc/default/grub to get this to work, none of them do anything at all. See /etc/default/grub file below:

/etc/default/grub file:

Code:

[paul@ohmster ~]$ cat /etc/default/grub
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=true
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="console"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rd.lvm.lv=centos_linux-server/swap crashkernel=auto rd.lvm.lv=centos_linux-server/root rhgb quiet nouveau.modeset=0 rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau"
GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY=true
GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768x24

# Hack to force higher framebuffer resolution
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=1024x768
[paul@ohmster ~]$

After changes are made, to make them "take" I rebuild the grub file and reboot:

Code:

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Doesn't work. Also taking the word "quiet" out of grub fills the screen with so much junk that is annoying. All I want is the old bootup screen that shows things like "Starting NTP - OKAY", "Starting httpd - FAILED", and those kind of messages. NOT constant screens at all times of white numerical junk!

Help me and you help the OP because this is what he wants. To run his machine ast "multi-user.target" and only go to "graphical.target" when he manually runs startx. Thanks if you can help!

ondoho · 05-28-2015, 01:39 AM

ohmster, in your case (geforce 9500) i can be fairly sure that the nvidia driver (legacy 304xx or 340xx?) simply does not support all non-GUI resolutions, and probably not the one native to your screen.
because i had a similar (or roughly same age) card. no amount of driver/framebuffer tweaking could change that.
the only thing that helped was an ugly hack that would first load the nouveau driver, and change to the nvidia driver when starting X (because i needed the nvidia driver for some games).

changing to a newer card (geforce 610) solved the problem, using only nvidia driver now.

you can always try to switch to a command line when grub starts, and issue

Code:

> vbeinfo

to get the available resolutions.
strangely, they often still didn't work for me.

if all that applies to your situation, all you can do is use some smaller font for your ttys.
like ohsnap maybe.

ohmster · 05-29-2015, 12:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ondoho

ohmster, in your case (geforce 9500) i can be fairly sure that the nvidia driver (legacy 304xx or 340xx?) simply does not support all non-GUI resolutions, and probably not the one native to your screen.
because i had a similar (or roughly same age) card. no amount of driver/framebuffer tweaking could change that.
the only thing that helped was an ugly hack that would first load the nouveau driver, and change to the nvidia driver when starting X (because i needed the nvidia driver for some games).

changing to a newer card (geforce 610) solved the problem, using only nvidia driver now.

you can always try to switch to a command line when grub starts, and issue

Code:

> vbeinfo

to get the available resolutions.
strangely, they often still didn't work for me.

if all that applies to your situation, all you can do is use some smaller font for your ttys.
like ohsnap maybe.

Okay, that makes good sense. I believe you, old card, no supported graphic modes but for x.

Code:

[paul@ohmster ~]$ rpm -qa |grep nvidia
kmod-nvidia-304xx-304.125-2.el7.elrepo.x86_64
nvidia-x11-drv-304xx-304.125-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64
nvidia-detect-346.59-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64

Compiz Cube rotates great. glxgears is 60 FPS.

The only thing that worked, sort of, is a .bashrc hack. This really did change your level 3 font as soon as you logged in.

# Change font when on a TTY
# Find fonts in /usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts/
if [ $TERM = linux ]; then
setfont Lat2-Terminus16
fi

This actually works but the font is still large. A bit nicer, but large. I tried some of the size 8 fonts like lat4-08.psfu.gz but all of them are very bold and too hard to read. I got a huge font list to choose from and none of them are really good.

Okay, your explanation is excellent. I need a new nvidia card. Need not be terribly expensive but a much newer card I guess. Thanks!

ondoho · 05-30-2015, 05:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ohmster

This actually works but the font is still large. A bit nicer, but large.

when i had the same problem, i used ohsnap for the console. i also adjusted console resolution to be 800x600 or 1024x768, iirc. via grub.