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jwm-art

Member

Registered: 2011-02-01

Posts: 87

[SOLVED] Oversized grub menu on Asus Z97-P & NVIDIA GTX

Hi,

When my system boots via UEFI, the grub menu is oversized for the video mode as if it thinks there are more columns and rows then there really are:

http://imgur.com/pZZ6Li6

As I use proprietary NVIDIA drivers and am trying to achieve a basic text mode console (ie 80x25 characters). I have set

GRUB_TERMINAL=console

and commeted out GRUB_GFXMODE and GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX.

I have also tried setting

GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=text

but it resulted with a message complaing about the value 'text' and a 'blind' boot so I have since commented it out.

The text mode that grub is in appears to be the same as when POST is shown, so I'm expecting there is nothing to be done. Once the kernal is booting the video mode is switched to 80x30.

There is also this is the journal:

NVRM: Your system is not currently configured to drive a VGA console
NVRM: on the primary VGA device. The NVIDIA Linux graphics driver
NVRM: requires the use of a text-mode VGA console. Use of other console
NVRM: drivers including, but not limited to, vesafb, may result in
NVRM: corruption and stability problems, and is not supported.

Which I'm not sure what to make of :-/

Last edited by jwm-art (2015-08-15 10:59:59)

Fixxer

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2011-08-29

Posts: 217

Re: [SOLVED] Oversized grub menu on Asus Z97-P & NVIDIA GTX

Post output of commands;

grep -v "#" /etc/default/grub

lspci -k | grep -A2 VGA

Check these settings:

GRUB_GFXMODE=AAAAxBBBB
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep

AAAAxBBBB => resolution you want to have

If you want pure tty/console you should use this setting:

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT=console

Last edited by Fixxer (2015-08-14 21:25:38)

jwm-art

Member

Registered: 2011-02-01

Posts: 87

Re: [SOLVED] Oversized grub menu on Asus Z97-P & NVIDIA GTX

Post output of commands;

grep -v "#" /etc/default/grub

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=1
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="Arch"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
GRUB_PRELOAD_MODULES="part_gpt part_msdos"
GRUB_TERMINAL=console
GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY=true
GRUB_COLOR_NORMAL="light-blue/black"
GRUB_COLOR_HIGHLIGHT="light-cyan/blue"

Post output of commands;

lspci -k | grep -A2 VGA

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM206 [GeForce GTX 960] (rev a1)
	Subsystem: eVga.com. Corp. Device 4966
	Kernel driver in use: nvidia

Post output of commands;
Check these settings:

GRUB_GFXMODE=AAAAxBBBB
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep

AAAAxBBBB => resolution you want to have

Like I said, I commented those out.
I'm reluctant to set GRUB_GFXMODE as I don't want a GFX mode, I want a text mode. Is this mistaken?

Post output of commands;
If you want pure tty/console you should use this setting:

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT=console

By setting GRUB_TERMINAL I set both input & output.

Last edited by jwm-art (2015-08-14 21:31:20)

jwm-art

Member

Registered: 2011-02-01

Posts: 87

Re: [SOLVED] Oversized grub menu on Asus Z97-P & NVIDIA GTX

Adding NVRM to my internet searches revealed a bit more information. UEFI doesn't do text mode, which I'm presuming is the cause of the bad text mode display in Grub - which has nothing to do with Nvidia - as is proven by switching to the onboard Haswell graphics and getting exactly the same result.

The only thing to do with Nvidia here is the NVRM kernal message which I don't understand as I have done all I can see can be done to force VGA text mode and which has worked in the past on a BIOS system with Nvidia.

Obviously X didn't work when I booted with the onboard GFX, but the console did switch from the initial 80x30 display to what I would guess was 80x50.

One of the more useful results, which I'm still processing was here: https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topi … laints-/1/

Although it seems to suggest the only fix is to boot in BIOS mode ?

Thought to be honest I've not experienced any problems at all with the current setup over the past couple of weeks I never use suspend & resume. Only installed grub yesterday.

Last edited by jwm-art (2015-08-15 09:51:50)

jwm-art

Member

Registered: 2011-02-01

Posts: 87

Re: [SOLVED] Oversized grub menu on Asus Z97-P & NVIDIA GTX

Based on the info in my previous post on this, I set GRUB_GFXMODE=auto and removed GRUB_TERMINAL=console.

Now the essential elements of /etc/default/grub are:

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=1
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="Arch"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
GRUB_PRELOAD_MODULES="part_gpt part_msdos"
GRUB_GFXMODE=auto
GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY=true

And guess what, grub displays properly and the NVRM messages have disappeared.

So I guess this is solved, but I'm none the wiser. Surely Nvidia haven't finally fixed their infamous issue?