RE: Nuking damned scrambled consoles.
Yes, setfont does work, fixing all consoles (all are affected) at once. Now
I'm trying to learn how to make setfont run on my way out of X. If I don't
learn that, I can try what you have below, but that seems to be one-VC
oriented.
Thanks much,
Hank
-----Original Message-----
From: David B. Teague [mailto:teague@WCUVAX1.WCU.EDU]
Sent: Sunday, August 16, 1998 6:27 AM
To: Hank Fay
Cc: debian-user
Subject: RE: Nuking damned scrambled consoles.
On Fri, 14 Aug 1998, Hank Fay and others wrote:
> Well you could also try typing
>
> setfont default8x16
>
> This is the only thing that would sort out an old Avance card that I
> have when i exitted from X to a VC. But I'm not optimistic, as my
> problem affected *all* VCs.
[..]
> Yup; it affects all vc's, just as you say. It looks like I need to reset
> the video card to another mode; the question is how. <s> My current
approach
> is to nuke the partitions and start over. <g>
Does the setfont command clear the console for anyone?
I think part of this may have already been said, but I've been off for
several days and cleaned my mail instead of reading it. Sorry.
I have not found that this problem affects all virtual consoles. If so,
I have been lucky. Such a situation suggests a mode on the video card
itself that is hard to get out of, and that any solution will require a
program to reset the card to some reasonable mode. Such a program will,
of course, require carnal knowledge of the cards internal codes etc.
At risk of being superfluous, this solution fixes systems that use a TVG
9400, an ATI Wonder, and another that uses a diamond speed star card. On
neither machine does the problem affect affect more than one console.
Typing directly control O to the console doesn't work for me, even
preceeded by a control V. I get
04:53:53:~/projects/fix-console$^O
bash: : command not found
both for control o attempts and for the escape c solution below.
My fix, from someone who told me about this:
Linux consoles behave as a superset of vt100. My experience is that the
vt100 reset codes sent raw to the console will reset a scrambled
console.
You can cat a file containing the character control O: With emacs, I
create a new file called controlO and type control Q control O, exit and
save. Any editor that allows entry of binary works.
I have a short script, fixit, that does nothing but cat the file:
#!/bin/sh
cat controO
This fixes the scrambled console for me.
An alternative is to put the escape character followed by 'c' in the
file that is cat'ed to the screen. This clears the screen and restores
the console. This also works for me.
I have not needed this since 1.1 where the reset command invariably
fixes the problem. Even cat'ing an executable does not give problems.
I can only scramble a console now by cat'ing a dvi file.
Please forgive repetition, and I hope this helps. Some one helped me
in the past with this problem.
Linux, because, "Reboots are for hardware upgrades."
--David
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