Console font is too big.

Travis86 · 11-25-2006, 11:17 PM

I just installed Gentoo. (I know most posts in the newbie forum don't start off that way, but this one does.) Unfortunately, after the bootloader is done, the console font is too big and bleeds off of the edges of the screen. Perhaps I could adjust my monitor, but this has never happened before and I'm kind of wondering what the deal is.

How do I get the font to be a normal size and fit on the screen?

Thanks.

vxc69 · 11-25-2006, 11:22 PM

Here's a great tutorial.

Hope this helps,

vxc

rickh · 11-25-2006, 11:43 PM

Here's a better one.

Travis86 · 11-26-2006, 12:45 AM

Well, nice article, rickh, but it didn't work. When I specified vga=791 on the same line with the kernel stuff, it said that it was an undefined mode and gave me this list to choose from:

Code:

Video adapter: VESA VGA
Mode:  COLxROWS:
0 0F00 80x25
1 0F01 80x50
2 0F02 80x43
3 0F03 80x28
4 0F05 80x30
5 0F06 80x34
6 0F07 80x60
7 0309 132x25
8 030A 132x43
9 030B 132x50
a 030C 132x60

It would boot if I set vga=1-6 (it still didn't like 6-a).
It would also boot if vga=791 was on its own line.
But in both cases the resolution wasn't any different.

I'm using a framebuffer (VESA) and I have the nvidia module loaded. Do you think that would have anything to do with it?

GRUB displays properly, even the error messages, but once it boots, the text is big and bleeds off of the left side of the screen.

fvu · 11-26-2006, 01:06 AM

I got a 100x37 font during boot by specifying vga=0x012A. See also:
http://www.fvue.nl/wiki/Linux:_Termi...umns_x_24_rows

Edit GRUB command line during boot, by pressing 'e'. Specify kernel parameter vga=ask: { e | vga=ask | b }. Press RETURN. Default modes are:

0 0F00 80x25
1 0F01 80x50
2 0F02 80x43
3 0F03 80x28
4 0F05 80x30
5 0F06 80x34
6 0F07 80x60

Press RETURN. Found additional modes:

7 0100 40x25
8 0122 132x44
9 0123 132x25
a 0124 132x28
b 012A 100x37

For use with boot, I had to prefix additional modes with '0x'.

Freddy Vulto

Travis86 · 11-26-2006, 02:26 PM

I can set it to whatever, but it never changes anything.

Travis86 · 12-03-2006, 03:18 PM

I decided that since the text was only wrong once grub loaded the kernel and none of the kernel parameters made any difference, there must be some kernel misconfiguration. Sure enough, there was a default VESA setting of some sort that was set to 640x480@60 (640x480 resolution @ 60 Hz), and when I changed it to 800x600@85 (in accordance with my monitor's specifications), everything worked fine.