[NOT SOLVED]How to give the login console more lines/use whole screen?

scot · 2023-03-21 01:34:37

My laptop boots into a text console that has 32 rows (lines of text) and 105 columns (i.e. is 105 characters wide). The area of the screen that is actually used extends from the top edge of the screen down to less than halfway to the bottom. A bit more than the entire lower half of the laptop screen is simply unused. Here is a 4-second video of my screen (and how text on it scrolls) you can look at if my description is not clear:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nxym98fkgnod5 … onsole.gif

My questions are simple: What do I configure to make that console have (say) 64 rows of text instead of 32? And how do i configure it?

It might be relevant for me to just note that the native resolution of the screen is 3840x2400. Also, while searching for the answer, I learned about early kernel modesetting. The laptop is a Dell with an intel integrated GPU and an Nvidia discrete GPU, and I now load the (proprietary) NVIDIA modules via the "MODULES" line in mkinitcpio.conf.

I think i understood that if I used grub I could just configure the size console I want into the grub configuration. But I use systemd (i.e. /boot/EFI/.. /boot/loader/loader.conf and /boot/loader/entries..)

Thank you in advance for the answer (or for a pointer to the answer )

scott

Last edited by scot (2023-04-12 22:49:53)

seth · 2023-03-21 08:59:29

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Kernel … stemd-boot
Try to run the console at a lower resolution:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/fb/modedb.rst
Eg. 1920x1200

scot · 2023-03-21 17:37:34

i feel so very stupid: I had tried every possible way I could think of to tell various subsytems that my resolution was HIGHER, not lower. (e.g. putting vga=3840x2400 or video=3840x2400 into kernel parameters). I was guessing that for whatever reason, the console was ignorant of the high resolution of my screen, and so smeared the console bits over "only" (say) 1920x1200 pixels. Why does announcing I have fewer pixels on my screen push the code to use twice as many pixels ?
I'll be able to try in an hour or two and of course will confirm/marked "solved" if so. Thanks for the advice; I **never** would have thought to try that.

seth · 2023-03-21 20:11:25

You're now telling the system to run the console at a lower resolution (banking on the plausible hope that the panel will stretch that)
You can also try to use a bigger font or kmscon, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/HiDPI# … sole_(tty)

scot · 2023-03-26 11:47:43

Adding the line

video=1024x768

worked perfectly: The login console now uses the entire screen. Indeed it tells me

$ stty size
75 240

whereas, as noted above, it used to be 32x105.

I'm still confused as to why indeed this "video=" parameter gave me more lines, rather than merely strectched my console's appearance. But I won't look a gift-horse in the mouth. Thanks very much.

Last edited by scot (2023-03-26 11:53:22)

d.ALT · 2023-03-27 14:18:16

scot wrote:

why indeed this "video=" parameter gave me more lines, rather than merely strectched my console's appearance

Mmm... I'm curious too! (or maybe we should have a common idea about the word strectched itself) May I kindly ask you posting the actual photo of your computer's monitor?

scot · 2023-04-12 23:22:26

d.ALT wrote:

May I kindly ask you posting the actual photo of your computer's monitor?

Perhaps I should not have changed the tag to [NOTSOLVED], but i wanted to indicate the I was mistaken before when i noted that seth's suggestion (to set the console to an artificially LOW resolution ) is a solution. The truth as I see it at present is this:

I apologize to d.ALT that it seems I didn't grant his request and post a screen shot of my larger linux console. That's because I couldn't: when i went to do that task, I discovered to my annoyance that my console had turned back to 25 lines. And NOTHING i could do seemed to change that. Whatever method I tried seem to have no effect now. It's been over a month, and i never again saw the console size I wanted, with more lines.

Until 10 minutes ago.

The laptop is a Dell 9500 with a second monitor attached directly to the laptop (via DisplayPort-over-USB-C) and a third monitor which is attached via HDMI to a Dell Thunderbolt Dock. But the monitors are much older than the laptop. Each is about 10 years old: one has a native resolution of 1280x1050 and thi other is 1920x1080 -- BOTH considerably lower resolution than that 3840x2400 on the laptop screen.

What's actually TRUE is this: if either or both of the low-res monitors are attached to the PC, the console has 25 lines. The font use is such at the 25 lines fill out the two monitors, but only use about half of the height of the laptop. If I boot the laptop without the older monitors, the linux terminal fills out the entire screen of the laptop. SO far, everything I've done to try to force some resolution early on, at boot, so that the effect will be seen in the number of lines in the login console, seems to cause absolutely NOTHING. That itself seems odd, but asking about that would be in a different thread.

Bottom line is:
1. to get more lines in the terminal app, I merely needed to remove all low-res monitors.
2. On the other hand, perhaps there is some kernel parameter to SSSTTTRRREEETTCCHH the console out across the hi-res monitor screen; without such a parameter, it seems that linux will give the console a number of lines that is appropriate for the lowest-resolution screen present.

seth · 2023-04-13 07:41:08

Running the internal display at a lower resolution (as suggested in #2) will either stretch the output or letterbox it, this very much depends on how your display handles lower resolutions (you can also test that in a GUI session)
Otherwise try to disable the external ouputs (as also explained in https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/fb/modedb.rst )

Arch Linux

#1 2023-03-21 01:34:37

[NOT SOLVED]How to give the login console more lines/use whole screen?

#2 2023-03-21 08:59:29

Re: [NOT SOLVED]How to give the login console more lines/use whole screen?

#3 2023-03-21 17:37:34

Re: [NOT SOLVED]How to give the login console more lines/use whole screen?

#4 2023-03-21 20:11:25

Re: [NOT SOLVED]How to give the login console more lines/use whole screen?

#5 2023-03-26 11:47:43

Re: [NOT SOLVED]How to give the login console more lines/use whole screen?

#6 2023-03-27 14:18:16

Re: [NOT SOLVED]How to give the login console more lines/use whole screen?

#7 2023-04-12 23:22:26

Re: [NOT SOLVED]How to give the login console more lines/use whole screen?

#8 2023-04-13 07:41:08

Re: [NOT SOLVED]How to give the login console more lines/use whole screen?

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