TTY Resolution in Xubuntu 9.10

Question

I've exhausted my ability to search through Google for this, so I'm giving it a go here.

What I'm trying to do is increase the resolution (or decrease the font size) in the TTY terminals. Xubuntu 9.10 uses GRUB2, and everywhere I can find directs me to edit the

/etc/default/grub

File in order to add vga=XXX to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX value, and this simply doesn't work. Out of endless fiddling with the file, nothing ever seems to change.

On my Netbook running an earlier version, I had success with this command

dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

But once again it yields no change.

Got any ideas?

Answer 1

I was looking for a way to do this for an Ubuntu 9.10 guest in VirtualBox, and got about halfway there. In my VM, the console TTYs get the correct resolution if I boot into single-user mode, but not if I boot into GDM.

Grub2 replaces the vga=XXX kernel option with a gfxpayload option that can be set in /boot/grub/grub.cfg. Ubuntu's update-grub command automatically generates grub.cfg from variables in /etc/default/grub and scripts in /etc/grub.d, so the best place to add this option is in one of those two places.

These are the Grub2 options (in grub.cfg syntax) that affect the console resolution:

• gfxmode: Sets the resolution of the Grub menu.
  eg: set gfxmode=1280x800 (no explicit bitdepth)
  eg: set gfxmode=1440x900x32 (explicit bitdepth)

• gfxpayload: Sets the resolution Grub passes to the kernel.
  eg: set gfxpayload=1024x720x16
  eg: set gfxpayload=keep (keeps resolution as set in gfxmode)

On my system, I added some scripting to the /etc/grub.d/00_header to support a new GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD variable that's specified in /etc/grub/default. This isn't strictly necessary, and there are lots of ways to do it; see the examples on the Debian and Ubuntu forum links below.

Sources:

• Grub2 graphical boot tips to set the desired VGA console mode
• examples of tweaking /etc/grub.d/00_header (forums.debian.net)
• Grub2 bug requesting an /etc/default/grub option to set gfxpayload; indicates GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX is supported in Grub2 v1.98. Ubuntu 9.10 currently uses v1.97.
• Ubuntu Forums thread on the same topic. indicates some vga= modes work, others don't.