Arch Linux

bcmyers

Member

Registered: 2019-07-01

Posts: 3

Change screen resolution in TTY in order to make text larger

Hi everyone. First post. I have Arch installed on a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Extreme laptop.

It has both Intel integrated graphics and an Nvidia card. I turned off the Intel graphics in the BIOS, however; so only the Nvidia card is used (I'm pretty sure). I use the open-source nouveau driver because I use Sway, which doesn't support the proprietary Nvidia driver that well.

Everything is mostly working great, but there's one thing about my setup that is really bothering me and I haven't figured out how to fix it. I was hoping someone here might know how to solve the problem.

The "preferred" resolution of my screen appears to be 3840x2160. This makes the text in my TTY console super, super tiny. I'd like to make it bigger so it's easier to read.

I managed to successfully change the screen resolution of GRUB to 1440x900, but once I start booting into Arch, the resolution of the TTY always switches back to 3840x2160.

Is there a way to change the resolution of the TTY so that I don't have to deal with the (incredibly) small text at the 3840x2160 resolution it currently uses?

So far, I've tried installing `uvesafb-dkms` and followed the instructions here https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Uvesafb to configure it, but that does not seem to work.

Relevant (I think) parts of my `/etc/default/grub`...

GRUB_GFXMODE=1440x900,1920x1200,auto
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD=1440x900,1920x1200,auto
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep

Relevant (I think) parts of my `/etc/mkinitcpio.conf`...

FILES=(/etc/modprobe.d/uvesafb.conf)
HOOKS=(base udev autodetect modconf block filesystems keyboard fsck v86d)

Relevant (I think) parts of my `/etc/modprobe.d/uvesafb.conf`...

options uvesafb mode_option=1440x900-32 scroll=ywrap

Relevant (I think) output of `videoinfo` command in GRUB terminal...

Adapter `EFI GOP driver`:
3840 x 2160 x 32
640 x 480 x 32
800 x 600 x 32
1024 x 768 x 32
1280 x 720 x 32
1280 x 800 x 32
1280 x 1024 x 32
1366 x 768 x 32
* 1440 x 900 x 32
1440 x 1050 x 32
1600 x 1200 x 32
1680 x 1050 x 32
1920 x 1200 x 32
2048 x 1536 x 32
Preferred mode: 3840x2160

To pre-empt a couple of obvious questions regarding the above: Yes, I updated my grub config with `sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg` and I ran `sudo mkinitcpio -p linux` once I configured `uvesafb`.

Thanks for your help!

Last edited by bcmyers (2019-07-01 22:49:05)

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,530

Website

Re: Change screen resolution in TTY in order to make text larger

Do you want to actually decrease the resolution, or just increase the font size?  If the latter, just do that:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Li … sole#Fonts

---

"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

bcmyers

Member

Registered: 2019-07-01

Posts: 3

Re: Change screen resolution in TTY in order to make text larger

Thanks! I will try increasing the font size, as that will fix what's most bothering me. That said, I would still like to know how to change the resolution of the TTY.

bcmyers

Member

Registered: 2019-07-01

Posts: 3

Re: Change screen resolution in TTY in order to make text larger

Alas, it appears that the largest font size I have available is 16, which is still super, super tiny at my resolution. So I think I’m back to either a) needing a way to change the resolution to fix the problem or b) having someone point me in the direction of where I can download much larger console font files or c) both.

Last edited by bcmyers (2019-07-01 23:40:55)

2ManyDogs

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2012-01-15

Posts: 4,648

Re: Change screen resolution in TTY in order to make text larger

The terminus-font package contains larger console fonts.

logansdaddy

Member

Registered: 2019-01-23

Posts: 7

Re: Change screen resolution in TTY in order to make text larger

I have a Lenovo Yoga 730-kib 15 with the same resolution as your X1.

As 2ManyDogs mentioned install the terminus-font package. Then you also want to modify the /etc/vconsole.conf or create it if it doesn't exist and add the line:

FONT=ter-132n