Arch Linux

Fazzi

Member

Registered: 2021-12-11

Posts: 10

vconsole font not being respected correctly during boot. (mkinitcpio)

Hello everyone, I am having a minor issue during the bootup of my laptop. Due to the size of the screen being 14", I have increased the tty font size by installing the `terminus-font` package, and changing the font in `/etc/vconsole.conf`. Here is the contents of the file:

KEYMAP=uk
FONT=ter-v28b

I have also made sure that my mkinitcpio hooks are correct to accommodate for the early loading of the font by setting these hooks:

HOOKS=(base systemd autodetect modconf kms keyboard sd-vconsole block sd-encrypt filesystems fsck)

Here are my boot options as stated in `/etc/kernel/cmdline`

rd.luks.name=a6911461-bfed-4c54-bff4-f92b98fc8a90=root root=/dev/mapper/root rootflags=subvol=@ rw

The `sd-vconsole` hook should take care of the font and keymap, which it does. The correct, larger font is loaded correctly very early. However, when my luks partition is being unlocked (automatically with tpm2), the font returns back to the default Arch Linux tty font, which is too small on my screen. What is strange though is that slightly later in the loading process the bigger font does come back. This makes it seem as though the screen flickered for a few seconds as it goes from a nice, large font, to a small, and hard to read font, and then back to the large one a few seconds later.

This is a minor issue but I'd be grateful if a solution could be found. If there is any more info required, I'd be happy to share anything with you as you need.

Thanks in advance for your help,
Fazzi

obelisk

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2021-01-10

Posts: 76

Re: vconsole font not being respected correctly during boot. (mkinitcpio)

Hello Fazzi,
I had some month ago similar thing with a HDPi Monitor. Font was too small for reading.
But I set in my HOOKS consolefont instead of sd-vconsole. Here my HOOKS:

#in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf:
HOOKS=(base udev autodetect modconf kms keyboard keymap consolefont numlock block filesystems fsck)

And in next step I use systemd-boot instead of grub. If you also use systemd-grub, maybe this helps you:
In systemd-boot I have set in the file /boot/loader/loader.conf the console-mode to max:

console-mode max
#Note: console-mode:
#0	Standard UEFI 80x25 mode
#1	80x50 mode, not supported by all devices
#2	the first non-standard mode provided by the device firmware, if any
#auto	Pick a suitable mode automatically using heuristics
#max	Pick the highest-numbered available mode
#keep	Keep the mode selected by firmware (the default)

In the /etc/vconsole.conf I use:

FONT=ter-d32b

Changing the consolefont without reboot is possible with setfont FONTNAME, e.g in your case:

setfont ter-v28b

and switching to any tty console. The fonts you can use are stored in

/usr/share/kbd/consolefonts

But when you use grub, I don't know how the console-resolution gets configured.
Hope this helps you, good luck

Fazzi

Member

Registered: 2021-12-11

Posts: 10

Re: vconsole font not being respected correctly during boot. (mkinitcpio)

Hi obelisk,

I'm afraid our issues are different. I would like to continue using the systemd hooks. My font does load in the end, but like I said before it's not loaded the entire way through. My systemd-boot settings are correct and it is loaded in 1920x1080.

This post also serves as a bump. If anyone experiences this same issue using sd-vconsole hook and having their font size flicker during boot, please let me know.

Fazzi

Member

Registered: 2021-12-11

Posts: 10

Re: vconsole font not being respected correctly during boot. (mkinitcpio)

bump.

CaeriTech

Member

Registered: 2021-07-12

Posts: 41

Re: vconsole font not being respected correctly during boot. (mkinitcpio)

Sounds similar to a font flicker problem I was having during boot.  Could the kernel boot parameter fbcon=nodefer as mentioned here here  be the solution?

---

-=[ LIVE enabled UEFI with redundant syslinux pure systemd detached LUKS header partitionless encrypted GPT SSDx3 RAID0 wayland only because I can.  ]=-
    Backward compatibility is for the masses. There's no dual-boot here.

    [CaeriTech remains only artificially intelligent.  Turing would be aghast at just how artificial.]

onebyte

Member

Registered: 2023-05-07

Posts: 4

Re: vconsole font not being respected correctly during boot. (mkinitcpio)

I don't know if it is okay to bumb this thread (please, excuse me if it's not), But I have the same issue as described in the first post.

I have spend several hours on it without success.

My setup is like this:

cat /etc/vconsole.conf
KEYMAP=us
FONT=ter-v16b

grep 'HOOKS=' /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
HOOKS=(base systemd autodetect microcode modconf kms keyboard sd-vconsole block sd-encrypt lvm2 filesystems fsck)

cat /etc/cmdline.d/root.conf
rd.luks.name=<UUID>=lvm root=/dev/vg/lv-root rw rootfstype=ext4 rd.shell=0 rd.emergency=reboot zswap.enabled=1

I have setfont binary and ter-v16b font included in the linux image.

sudo lsinitcpio --list /efi/EFI/Linux/arch-linux.efi | rg -i 'setfont'
usr/bin/setfont

sudo lsinitcpio --list /efi/EFI/Linux/arch-linux.efi | rg -i 'ter-v16b'
usr/share/kbd/consolefonts/ter-v16b.psf

Adding fbcon=nodefer does nothing - still flashing when LUKS prompt is shown.

Adding quiet kernel parameter does not set the font at all too - ly DM is not displayed correctly and I also get this error:

systemd-vconsole-setup[775]: setfont: ERROR kdfontop.c:212 put_font_kdfontop: Unable to load such font with such kernel version
systemd-vconsole-setup[771]: /usr/bin/setfont failed with a "system error" (EX_OSERR), ignoring.
systemd-vconsole-setup[771]: Setting source virtual console failed, ignoring remaining ones.

Edit:

After messing arround adding all

fbcon=nodefer quiet splash

actually almost works, if you don't want to see any messages during boot, but there is still a flash when when the blinking cursor is shown.

Last edited by onebyte (2024-12-14 18:41:40)