fbcon resolution

July 17, 2010 — BarryK

I was discussing this problem recently:
http://bkhome.org/archive/blog2/201007/setting-resolution-of-the-framebuffer-console.html

With radeon/intel/nouveau kernel and Xorg drivers, Kernel Mode Setting has to be turned on, but this causes a very high-resolution console (when switch to a tty or exit from X) -- and tiny text.

I experimented with a bigger font. The 'terminus' font has up to 16x32 which is big enough but to my eyes looks ugly. But, the native resolution of the console will vary on different PCs, so needing different size fonts.

So, I came back to considering boot parameters. I looked at the 'sysctl' utility, no good. Anyway, after a lot of messing around, I found that the boot parameter:

video=640x480

works fine and I can't see any downside to it. I thought that it might compromise Xorg's automatic probing but it doesn't seem to.

Well, it would seem best to build that into the command line. An inbuilt boot commandline can be compiled into the kernel, so I'll do that next time I compile the kernel.

Comments

Console resolution
Username: pemasu
I have used video=640x480 since I got my new laptop with all recent kernel puppies succesfully with my intel and ati dual graphics. Vga_switcheroo would be the next nice addition."17 Jul 2010, 15:57"01726"62.106.11.122'Kernel recompiled"BarryK"I have recompiled the 2.6.34.1 kernel with "video=640x480" boot parameter built-in. Here is the PET: http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/quirky/pet_packages-quirky/linux_kernel-2.6.34.1-smp-1-s131.pet Username: 17 Jul 2010, 23:05
"01726"114.129.167.148'Kernel config"BarryK"The new .config file is here: http://bkhome.org/sources/kernel-2.6.34.1/UPDATE-17JULY2010/ Username: 17 Jul 2010, 23:13
"01726"114.129.167.148'Built-in command line"stvn"With the built-in kernel command line, can I still boot with video=<something else>? I kind of like the high resolution console on my netbook."18 Jul 2010, 8:00"01726"24.9.177.84'Re boot params"BarryK"Whatever you type in gets appended to the built-in parameters. So, I don't know, what does the kernel do, just evaluate left-to-right and use the second "video" parameter value? Username: 18 Jul 2010, 9:18
"01726"114.129.167.148'Re Re boot params"stvn"I just tried booting my Slackware install with 'video=640x480 video=1024x600' and it used 1024x600, so I think it should work. Thanks, Barry"19 Jul 2010, 2:39"01726"24.9.177.84'

Tags: puppy