Arch Linux

xunilhcra_2025

Member

Registered: 2025-02-21

Posts: 13

[solved] xorg setting dpi for display manager login screen

New arch user for about a week now.  Installed via archinstall with xfce4 and ly display manager and nvidia drivers and everything is pretty much working fine.

One niggle is that the resolution on the ly login screen is high so the text is very small.  'xdpyinfo | grep -B 2 resolution' reports:

resolution:  96x96 dots per inch. 

I tried editing /etc/ly/config.ini to start the X server with -dpi 120 option but it didn't change anything.

I also tried adding these lines to /etc/X11/xorg.conf but it didn't change anything either:

Option "UseEdidDpi" "FALSE"
Option "DPI" "120 x 120"

Any ideas of how I could get the login screen to either be a lower resolution or a different DPI setting?

Inside xfce4 I have I used the settings->appearance tab to change dpi to 120 so it looks good there.  Just the login screen I need to adjust.  Thanks.

Last edited by xunilhcra_2025 (2025-02-23 03:46:09)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 75,413

Re: [solved] xorg setting dpi for display manager login screen

ly is not a GUI DM, it runs on the console - so you want to either change its video mode or pick a larger console font.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Linux_console#Fonts
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/fb/modedb.rst

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xunilhcra_2025

Member

Registered: 2025-02-21

Posts: 13

Re: [solved] xorg setting dpi for display manager login screen

Thanks so much, that helped a lot.

So I added:

'video=640x480'  to the end of the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT string in /etc/default/grub and ran 'sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub/cfg'

After rebooting, the console and ly resolution was good.  Xfce4 also works good after login.

Last edited by xunilhcra_2025 (2025-02-21 22:05:20)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 75,413

Re: [solved] xorg setting dpi for display manager login screen

\o/
Please always remember to mark resolved threads by editing your initial posts subject - so others will know that there's no task left, but maybe a solution to find.
Thanks.

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How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc