Re: Re: specifying vga mode in lilo

[paul@mackinney.net]

Benedict Verheyen declaimed:
> ------------------------
>  Vineet Kumar <debian-user@virtual.doorstop.net> wrote:
> ------------------------
> 
> >* Benedict Verheyen (benedict.verheyen@pandora.be) [030609 09:26]:
> >> Hi,
> >> 
> >> i specified vga=9 in my lilo.conf, ran lilo and then
> >> rebooted. I know this mode is possible because i first
> >> did a vga=ask and scanned for the available modes.
> >> Now, it complains that it doesn't know this mode so i
> >> have to do a scan first and then it adds the newly
> >> found modes to the list so i can select them.
> >> How can i make those newly found modes persistent so
> >> i don't have to do a scan every time i boot.
> >
> >Since the numbers are different after you choose scan, I find it more
> >sane to use one of the hexadecimal mode numbers, which don't depend on
> >the order of the menu displayed by vga=ask.  These are documented in
> >Documentation/svga.txt and Documentation/fb/vesafb.txt.
> 
> I'll check those docs. However, i haven't installed framebuffer
> support since i don't know what it actually does. 

You don't need it to use the "vga= " argument.

> Am i correct in understanding that with vesa framebuffer enabled, my
> text consoles would look nicer (and my startup would include a penguin
> logo :-) ) ?  

Yes, but there's a caveat that people don't often mention, which is that
the top 5 or so lines of the screen (where the penguin appears) can
subsequently have drawing problems, which sucks if you're trying to read
man pages.

> However, i would not want to use the vesafb for X as i
> have my nvidia drivers handling everything. Is this possible?

X won't use the framebuffer device unless you tell it to; installing the
framebuffer support should have no effect on X by default.

My experience: running the framebuffer shows the cute penguin and the
fonts are smoother, but I've quit using it because I almost alwasy run
X, and I've had the framebuffer show me a blank screen after quitting
out of X (very annoying) whereas this has never happened when running
without it.

HTH, Paul
-- 
Paul Mackinney
paul@mackinney.net