Arch Linux

Funzo

Member

Registered: 2015-10-15

Posts: 1

Screen cut off (overscan)

I have spent the past 2 hours trying to install Arch Linux on my minnow board (2gb) from USB, trying to use my MicroSD as the primary storage.

First I could not get my USB to boot - turns out I just had to appropriately name my drive.
Then It booted to a blank screen - fucked about with EFI settings in the BIOS sorted this somehow, I have no idea how I did it.

Now I am trying to partition my SD card but I cant! because..... I simply cant see what it is label'd as because my screen is badly cut off. From the command 'lsbik', I can see that the dive *MAY* end in 'k0' but I simply don't know and don't know how to find out with my screen cut off. This is not a resolution problem, I can adjust the screen res and its still cut off, I believe I need to adjust the overscan but I am A.) not sure how to do this and B.) will still have the screen cut off whilst trying to fix the problem. I need a simple command really..... wishful thinking I know.

I can see my USB drive with 'cfdisk sdb' and according to documentation, the SD card should probably be labled 'sdc' but it does not seem to be, as stated above, it looks to end in 'k'.

Not too impressed with this installation so far, probably going to go with a distro of Linux that is not so much hassle if I cannot get this sorted soon which would be a shame because I enjoy the learning curve and I want a light distro of linux but so far its just been stupid problem after problem and I say stupid because I am not getting any cleverer fixing them, I'm just wasting my time.

Any help would be ow so much appreciated,
Nick

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,349

Re: Screen cut off (overscan)

Welcome to Arch Linux.

A couple questions.  What are you using for a display?
Do you have a network connection (wired)
Can you ssh into the system from another computer on your network?  https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Install_from_SSH

Everyone:  For clarity, this is not an ARM based machine.  It is an Intel Atom.

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drcouzelis

Member

From: Connecticut, USA

Registered: 2009-11-09

Posts: 4,092

Website

Re: Screen cut off (overscan)

You're using the TTY (without X), correct? I've never heard of overscan being fixed without using X...

As for simply seeing the output of a command, just pipe the output into a text file (For example, "command >> output.txt"), open it in a text editor, and add some spaces to the beginning of the line. It's crude, but you'll be able to get the information you need.

What Linux distribution would you use that is lightweight and would not be as much of a hassle? Two hours to install Arch Linux isn't unreasonable, considering the need to read the Beginner's Guide (the official unofficial installation guide).

Last edited by drcouzelis (2015-10-16 12:32:22)