Newbie TTY font size question

[beecee]

Hi everyone,
I am running a HD install of Knoppix-3.2. It's 99.99% fantastic!!

I compiled & installed my first kernel, 2.6.1, and after some hair-pulling, got it to boot successfully. The one thing that's vexing me is: The TTY font size is huge, and I don't know how to reduce it (toldja it was a newbiw question!). When 2.4.22 boots, the TTY font size is nice & small - Is there a command I can pass the kernel to do this and more than that, a way to automate it?

TIA!!

[Roney Eduardo O. Santos]

Try putting in your lilo.conf one of this lines:

vga=791 (for 1024x76

or

vga=788 (for 800x600)

or

vga=785 (for 640x400).

Glad if I could help...

[beecee]

Aha! my lilo.conf has 'normal'; I'll try '791' Thanks!

[Roney Eduardo O. Santos]

dit it work as you expected?

[EmDee]

Little off topic but probably a similar problem; I used to have knoppix-hd-install on my system with 2.6.0 and I did not see any of the "dmesg-output" until kdm came up. Otherwise the kernel ran just fine. Just curious what might have caused this. any ideas?

[Stephen]

Little off topic but probably a similar problem; I used to have knoppix-hd-install on my system with 2.6.0 and I did not see any of the "dmesg-output" until kdm came up. Otherwise the kernel ran just fine. Just curious what might have caused this. any ideas?

The framebuffer that is being used (vga=791 in the /etc/lilo.conf) is not working with the 2.6 kernel when you boot you should use Linux vga=normal at the lilo screen (change the Linux to whatever is displayed for the kernel being booted) or edit the /etc/lilo.conf and make the change there to be used everytime you boot do not forget to run /sbin/lilo after making the change to have it written to the disk.

[EmDee]

ok, cool, thanks a lot, I'll remember that for my next 2.6 trial! Are there any compile time options that I should know about regarding this issue?

[Stephen]

ok, cool, thanks a lot, I'll remember that for my next 2.6 trial! Are there any compile time options that I should know about regarding this issue?

If I remember correctly this is what I tracked it down too needing to be set.

#
# Character devices
#
CONFIG_VT=y
CONFIG_VT_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_HW_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_SERIAL_NONSTANDARD=y

#
# Graphics support
#
CONFIG_FB=y
# CONFIG_FB_CYBER2000 is not set
# CONFIG_FB_IMSTT is not set
# CONFIG_FB_VGA16 is not set
CONFIG_FB_VESA=y
CONFIG_VIDEO_SELECT=y
# CONFIG_FB_HGA is not set
# CONFIG_FB_RIVA is not set

#
# Console display driver support
#
CONFIG_VGA_CONSOLE=y
# CONFIG_MDA_CONSOLE is not set
CONFIG_DUMMY_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_PCI_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_FONTS=y
CONFIG_FONT_8x8=y
CONFIG_FONT_8x16=y
# CONFIG_FONT_6x11 is not set
# CONFIG_FONT_PEARL_8x8 is not set

If you want the little penguin logo.

#
# Logo configuration
#
CONFIG_LOGO=y
# CONFIG_LOGO_LINUX_MONO is not set
# CONFIG_LOGO_LINUX_VGA16 is not set
CONFIG_LOGO_LINUX_CLUT224=y

And if you want the PC speaker to make noise.

#
# Input Device Drivers
#
CONFIG_INPUT_MISC=y
CONFIG_INPUT_PCSPKR=y

[beecee]

In fact, this was my problem exactly. When I set vga=791 in lilo.conf, no TTY. vga=normal = VGA!!. Still can't get the font size where I want it, but I think I'll wait for a few more revs before I try 2.6 again. I found in X when I opened > 1 konsole, there was serious weirdness ... none of my typing showed up, screen wouldn't clear, etc. Thanks for the sound tip also!!