Re: invisible console
On Fri, 30 Apr 2010 06:47:13 -0400 (EDT), Jan Willem Stumpel wrote:
>
> I like an old-fashioned VGA text look on the console; in
> /etc/default/console-setup I have
>
> FONTFACE="VGA"
> FONTSIZE="16"
>
> This used to work.
>
> But after a dist-upgrade around April 10th, the behaviour changed.
>
> 1 -- cold startup works normally (and looks normal).
> 2 -- startx works OK
> 3 -- pressing control-alt-f2 (to go to the console temporarily)
> now gives a (framebuffer?) screen with very small letters; at the
> top of the screen there is a message from "drm" stating that the
> resolution is set to 1250 x 1024 (instead of 640 x 480 which is
> what I want).
> 4 -- presing alt-f7 gets me back into X.
> 5 -- pressing control-alt-f2 AGAIN gives a completely black
> screen. Nothing visible. Going back to X with alt-f7 is still
> possible.
>
> uname -a gives:
> Linux vega 2.6.32-3-686 #1 SMP Thu Feb 25 06:14:20 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux
>
> This kernel was installed recently; booting an earlier kernel,
> e.g. 2.6.29-2, gets the old (proper) behaviour back.
>
> Configuration error? Or bug? If the latter, which package?
I think that this is a bug, but I don't know where. I'm
guessing that it has something to do with KMS in newer kernels.
But that's just a guess. I do a lot of work in the text
consoles. I often use an 80x50 video mode
(via the VGA option of lilo), which generally
works everywhere. Anyway, I was not happy with the fonts provided
by console-setup; and I wanted to go back to the legacy fonts that are
used by Lenny. I opened
a thread on this forum about the problem
(http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2009/12/msg01438.html) and
got a satisfactory resolution. Here's what I would recommend
that you try. First, make sure that the console-data package
is installed. Then, in /etc/default/console-setup, set
FONTFACE=""
FONTSIZE=""
Then add
FONT=lat1u-16.psf.gz
In my case, I use lat1u-08.psf.gz as the font, since the 80x50 video
mode requires an eight-pixel-high font; but in your case, since you
apparently use the traditional VGA boot-up hardware text mode
(no framebuffer, I presume), you will need the sixteen-pixel-high
font.
Give that a whirl and see how it goes. This method gives a larger
selection of fonts to choose from. (lat1u-16 is a suggestion,
but there are other sixteen-pixel-high fonts you can choose from.
See the /usr/share/consolefonts directory for a complete list.)
And in my opinion, these fonts look better too. But most importantly,
this method may circumvent the bug you are experiencing. If it
does circumvent the bug, console-setup is the most suspect package.
--
.''`. Stephen Powell
: :' :
`. `'`
`-
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