On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 07:05:14PM +0000, Richard Melville wrote: > Ken, I'm using vesafb on a web server with no Xorg, and I just use the > console. I realise that my kernel was quite old but as I like to check > every configuration option (often because of new hardware) it takes a long > time to configure a new kernel and becomes incredibly boring towards the > end :-( Therefore, I usually limit my upgrades to about one per year, or > when I can be bothered.
OK, but in that case I suggest that you go for "early stable" kernels (.1, .2, etc). You said you had been using 3.7-rc8 - that probably turned out to be totally good for your uses, but sometimes even .0 releases still have issues in a few places. Also, the config you use in a late -rc will normally not provide any extra questions for released / stable kernels in the same series if you use 'make oldconfig'. > > Bruce, my framebuffer config was much like yours but with one exception: I > had CONFIG_X86_SYSFB=y. This was stopping vesafb loading and stopping > /dev/fb0 being created. I've removed that option, reconfigured, and now it > all works as expected. Interesting. That option works ok on intel (I'm running with it at the moment), I'll try to remember that for the future - my server also runs with CONFIG_FB_VESA and vga=792 (it's a radeon RS780, when I got it I had no experience with modern ATI hardware and totally failed to get the radeon framebuffer to work - 80x25 is too restrictive for me!) - for the moment I'm running 3.10 (LTS) there. > > Regarding vga=792, that still works for me. If I substitute video=1024x768 > the command is ignored an I get a large, ugly font. I'm currently using > grub-2.0, so I can't understand what the problem is likely to be. Any > ideas? > > Richard Stick with vga=792 since it still works ? Any idea how large the font is, or how many pixels in the screen size when you boot with video=1024x768 ? When the box boots, you get the font from its bios. But when the LFS bootscripts start to run it ought to switch to your specified font (provided the setup supports it, e.g. my own 12x22 is only supported on framebuffers and I've not tried it with Vesa, my screen there is physically 1024x768 so I use an 8x16 font on that). So, basically work out what sort of console font *size* will suit you, then try "setfont" in a spare tty and see if any of the available fonts look ok _and_ provide the character coverage you require. My own LatGrkCyr are intended for white/pale text on a black background and I'm told that at least one of them looks awful with dark text on a pale background : there is a balance between getting adequate coverage, shapes which do not offend our own particular sensibilities, and being able to distinguish the various accents and diacritical markings - for some uses, noting that a glyph is e.g. "letter a with accent" may be good enough, but others may wish to be able to see at a glance what sort of accent is present, particularly in unfamiliar languages. ĸen -- das eine Mal als Tragödie, dieses Mal als Farce -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
