Re: vga=ask in lilo.conf
On Mon, Dec 20, 1999 at 03:13:37PM -0800, Andy Thomas wrote:
> Hi,
> Is this known to be a bit buggy? I put this in there and once in awhile
> (every 5th boot or so... I know linux is stable but am saving electricity
> <g>) I get the video option in the boot menu ("hit enter to choose"). Once
> it "crashed the video" (after choosing something like 132 x something
> mode)... another time I chose 80x50 and it went that way for awhile, then
> reverted to 80x25. Most of the time though the menu never comes up at all
> during boot.
Not sure what's causing this behaviour.
> vga=ask was indicated as an option by the O'Reilly book.
Yep, this should show you all the options available to you.
The kernel has built-in support for the standard VGA text modes (not to be
confused with SVGATextMode package) which you can call at boot-time by
passing values to the kernel from LILO.
My preferred way of doing this is via the LILO prompt itself, which gives me
the flexibility to turn this one on and off at will.
Some video cards can't do the various modes they claim to support quite right,
so on new machines, calling this stuff from the LILO boot prompt (if you have
it enabled) allows you to play with the settings to find the best one for the
particular machine.
So at the LILO: prompt, type:
"linux vga=ask" if your kernel image is called linux as most are...
You'll be prompted through displaying the possibilities your card can support.
You then choose and voila... smaller text than you had during the LILO portion
of the boot.
Some settings don't work so well, so play and find what's best for your machine.
Then you can either define it on the command line from LILO "linux vga=2", or
just put it in /etc/lilo.conf and rerun lilo ... as I believe you said the
O'Reilley book suggests.
> TIA for any insight into this.
> Andy
Hope it helps...
Nate, nate@natetech.com
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