Hi Yasha Karant! On 2012.01.14 at 10:25:43 -0800, Yasha Karant wrote next:
> At present, the only means I have found to force SL 6.x to display > the actual steps during the boot of SL 6.x is to hit the ESC key; > otherwise, only a time changing indicator appears, but no actual > information. However, even so displaying, I have still have the > issue below. > > The font SL 6.x uses is too small on some platforms. What controls > this font size: a configuration file in SL, a setting in either the > BIOS or the bootloader (e.g. grub) -- both of which have > relinquished control to SL at this stage of the boot -- or something > else, perhaps hard compiled that cannot be changed without > recompilation? > > I fully understand that this may be set to be identical to TUV and > other EL clones. I do not care. Just as ELRepo or SL additions > provide (some) functionalities beyond those of TUV, I would like to > modify this. It's two thing that control it: framebuffer resolution and actual font size. To get bigger font, you can either increase font size or reduce resolution. Font is defined in /etc/sysconfig/i18n with SYSFONT directive; for example, mine is 8x16 font "cyr-sun16.psuf.gz". You can look at /lib/kbd/consolefonts for full list of fonts. Example of bigger font is sun12x22.psfu.gz Also, SYSFONT is passed as kernel parameter from grub; that's font used by kernel before i18n file is parsed and font is changed. For consistency, you probably should change SYSFONT= directive in /boot/grub/grub.conf too. To reduce framebuffer resolution, specify different video= option as kernel parameter from grub. Default varies depending on video card and monitor; it can be 1024x768, 1600x900 or anything else. Try video=800x600 for example. You might need to specify framebuffer driver, too, like video=radeonfb:800x600 or video=radeondrmfb:800x600 etc You can find try to find your current framebuffer driver by executing something like "dmesg|grep fbcon" after boot. It really is a complicated topic as exact name can depend on KMS / nomodeset kernel options and so on. Documentation/fb/modedb.txt from kernel-doc package explains video= option, as for mode setting & fb driver stuff, I don't really know precise documentation, so google is your friend, if you have to venture there.. -- Vladimir