Simple Screen Resolution Fix....???

[UserCPMB]

Okay, I'm really ticked.

I've just installed Debian Jessie -- seems to me there's no point upgrading to stable if I can't fix this problem -- booting with LILO. I don't use grub because I've never figured it out.

So it boots fine as far as VGA mode...nice clear readable text etc. But by the time I get to the getty login, the screen resolution drops (or raises) to about 1/3 and I can barely read the text.

I've spent HOURS googling and searching and trying stuff like systemctl, xrandr, lsmod, looking at runlevel symlinks, scripts...etc. 90% of the time I get the old "command not found' Yippee!!!

So it can't really be THAT difficult to change the screen resolution affecting all instances of getty (or what have you) so that each terminal is readable...is it????



What I've got:

Jessie
Asus P4S8X
SiS chipset
Radeon 9800 VGA / DVI using VGA
Asus VW266 Monitor (2048 x 1536 max)


Took a look through dmesg and noticed a few things:


[drm] radeon kernel mode setting enabled
[drm] initializing kernel mode setting (RV280 0x1002:0x5960 0x1748:0x0250)


some stuff about failing to load firmware radeon/R200_cp.bin
then eventually


fbcon: radeondrmfb (fb0) is primary device
Console: switching to color frame buffer device 240x75

[drm] Initialized radeon 2.39.0 20080528 for 0000:00:0c.0 on minor 0


Any suggestions???

[bw123]

On jessie I always used these in /etc/default/grub

Code: Select all

GRUB_GFXMODE=800x600x32
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD=KEEP
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=KEEP


on stretch I have remove the =KEEP lines and instead used console-setup to adjust the font.

YOu don't have to use the firmware, but I never ran a radeon board without it, so I don't know what the results will be. You don't have to use grub, but there's really not a lot to figure out, it pretty much does it all without much help. Maybe LILO has some similar settings to these. Maybe jessie has a console-setup prog like stretch, so try that.

Post by UserCPMB » 2018-04-12 11:03 Okay, I'm really ticked.

Funny.

[shep]

some stuff about failing to load firmware radeon/R200_cp.bin
then eventually

The firmware is important for 3D Acceleration. See
https://wiki.debian.org/AtiHowTo

[stevepusser]

some stuff about failing to load firmware radeon/R200_cp.bin
then eventually

The firmware is important for 3D Acceleration. See
https://wiki.debian.org/AtiHowTo

Some AMD GPUs won't work at all in X without the firmware, so install it by all means. Or use the Jessie install image that includes the non-free firmware.

What's the "getty" login? Do you mean the gdm login screen?

[p.H]

getty is the console login.

The switch to high resolution is caused by the framebuffer using kernel modesetting (KMS) to select the best available native resolution. If you want to disable this and stick to the (ugly IMO) VGA resolution you can add the parameter "nomodeset" to the kernel command line.

Selecting a higher font size may be a better solution, but dpkg-reconfigure console-setup does not seem to propose much bigger sizes than the default one (8x16).

The firmware is only needed to enable some graphic acceleration on this old family of Radeon GPU. I guess it won't make much difference in consoles. Newer families starting from Radeon HD 2000 require a firmware to enable KMS.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

sun12x22.psfu.gz is pretty big, you could try that:

https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=4115

[UserCPMB]

Thanks Guys for posting replies.

Turns out the solution was to add the "nomodeset" argument in my lilo.conf as append="quiet nomodeset"

Looked at the other solutions. Settings for Grub don't work cause I don't have that loaded. Docs I've read indicate wouldn't make a difference anyways. Grub arguments only affect the master boot process. Once the kernel loads and gets to the initial process (aka init) Grub has long since expired.

As per the rest, I'm thinking you're all on systems with GUI's and X-windows. I'm running a basic install with getty (tty) text mode console login. I've only ever used Debian to setup partitions and multiple boot images. Never grew past my starting point of 15 years ago . It's worked great for that application, despite often hoping to do more with it. Maybe when I get older...??

Thank's again fellers....

"Most people in life major in minor things. That is, they're focused on how to make a living instead of how to design their life." - Tony Robbins

[p.H]

Turns out the solution was to add the "nomodeset" argument in my lilo.conf

This is the "quick and dirty" solution, because it actually degrades the display quality. Modesetting allows to use the native screen resolution. I understand that the default font size is too small for you in the native screen resolution, so setting a larger font size would provide a nicer display. But I have never played with console fonts and cannot help you about this.

[bw123]

If you don't want framebuffer, then you can maybe still use the vga= kernel parameters? I have an integrated radeon that uses r200, and an addin r300 radeon that's a little newer. Way back when, I liked vga=791. I think the text installer still uses vga=788. Don't ask me what the modes are, I never have found the reference, but those are two that displayed well on both older radeon boards without firmware. I only used them for short time setup though, once I got x setup and firmware installed I always dropped them.

I get plenty of larger sizes in console-setup with firmware loaded. The terminus, and terminusbold both are good, seem to display just fine. They go up to 16x32 but 10x20 works for me @1600x1200