svgatextmode - fbset: not so smooth
Hello everyone. I just switched to a more modern graphics board with VESA 2.0 support. This board is not supported by svgatextmode, and won't be as there's no development of svgatextmode anymore. So I have to use the framebuffer console, instead of svgatextmode, to provide high-resolution text display (which is quite important to me). The modes I can select for the framebuffer at boot are limited to the VESA modes, for example to get 128x48 characters I need vga=0x305 which is 1024x768 pixels at 60Hz refresh rate. But the hardware can do much better: in X I can have this resolution with 95Hz! Now it seems I should be able to set the desired mode with fbset after booting, just like I did with svgatextmode. Unfortunately, there's a catch: fbset only changes the mode _for the current virtual terminal_. As soon as I switch to another vt, I am back to the default mode from boot. So I tried something like this #! /bin/sh for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ; do chvt $i ; fbset 1024x768-95 done chvt 1 but not even this seems to work! The mode is changed - for vt1 only, just as before. Somehow the kernel seems to tightly associate the framebuffer settings with vt1 until I switch to another vt _interactively_. So the only way to change the mode for all vts is to log in on each one and run fbset manually. On top of that fbset can only be run as root, so this must be done with su/sudo :-( All this almost makes me regret the upgrade. Is there a way around this difficulty? Thanks, -- Ian Zimmerman, Oakland, California, U.S.A. The easiest way to win an argument: ridicule your opponent's basic assumptions by stating their negation and postfixing it with , right? GPG pub key: 433BA087 9C0F 194F 203A 63F7 B1B8 6E5A 8CA3 27DB 433B A087
Re: svgatextmode - fbset: not so smooth
Thus spake Ian Zimmerman: Hello everyone. I just switched to a more modern graphics board with VESA 2.0 support. This board is not supported by svgatextmode, and won't be as there's no development of svgatextmode anymore. So I have to use the framebuffer console, instead of svgatextmode, to provide high-resolution text display (which is quite important to me). The modes I can select for the framebuffer at boot are limited to the VESA modes, for example to get 128x48 characters I need vga=0x305 which is 1024x768 pixels at 60Hz refresh rate. But the hardware can do much better: in X I can have this resolution with 95Hz! Now it seems I should be able to set the desired mode with fbset after booting, just like I did with svgatextmode. Unfortunately, there's a catch: fbset only changes the mode _for the current virtual terminal_. As soon as I switch to another vt, I am back to the default mode from boot. So I tried something like this #! /bin/sh for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ; do chvt $i ; fbset 1024x768-95 done chvt 1 but not even this seems to work! The mode is changed - for vt1 only, just as before. Somehow the kernel seems to tightly associate the framebuffer settings with vt1 until I switch to another vt _interactively_. So the only way to change the mode for all vts is to log in on each one and run fbset manually. On top of that fbset can only be run as root, so this must be done with su/sudo :-( All this almost makes me regret the upgrade. Is there a way around this difficulty? Just resolved this problem myself last night - in /etc/lilo.conf, put in a line like this: image=/vmlinuz #(or whatever your boot image is) append=video=vesafb:[EMAIL PROTECTED] #this 1024x768 24bpp 60Hz label=Linux That fixed it for me. Good luck, Steve -- :wq
