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Limine resolution fix in initrd

September 30, 2022 — BarryK

I posted about a refinement of the Limine menu:

https://bkhome.org/news/202209/limine-nested-menu.html

Finally settled on 800x600 as a good screen size, with reasonably-large text.

A problem occurs when Limine hands over to the Linux kernel and the initramfs is loaded, the screen switches to a high resolution, with very small text and wallpaper:

img1

Whereas, when we were using rEFInd boot loader, got this:

img2

I discussed it with Limine developer mintsuki:

https://github.com/limine-bootloader/limine/issues/226

...there are some questions left unanswered, but anyway, "RESOLUTION=800x600" works.

I wondered why appending "x32" works, but none of "x4", "x8", "x16" or "x24".

Also, my understanding is that many very old video cards to not support 32 bit-depth. What then, does Limine know and use what is available as reported by the video card?

If you have some knowledge of video card supported bit-depths and can shed further light on this, I would appreciate feedback at the EasyOS section of the Puppy Forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewforum.php?f=63

Note, the Contact form at top of this page no longer works. My site host upgraded PHP and broke my script.

Anyway, we now have a consistency of text size, going from the Limine menu to the initrd. After switch_root, the kernel will load the KMS video driver and the screen will switch to a high resolution.   

Tags: easy