How to increase kernel messages resolution?

Help with graphics cards on GhostBSD.
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giocitta
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Sep 05, 2017 5:25 am

How to increase kernel messages resolution?

Post by giocitta »

I'm a newbie as regards FreeBSD, but I've a very good experience with Gentoo. I would like to change in favor of GhostBSD because it is very well done and interesting. I installed it with MATE desktop on my PC (i7, Asus motherboard, 8GB ram, 2 scsi hard disks) on the entire second disk: all is OK. Anyhow, at boot, immediately after the grub screen, the kernel messages do appear too big starring "VT(vga); resolution=640x480", and so very unpleasant. I've an nvidia graphic card and nvidia-modeset.ko and nvidia.ko drivers are normally loaded. In fact, everything becomes perfect as soon as I enter into the GUI (working at 1920x1080). My problem is that I would change at boot from 640x480 to at least 1024x768, but how to do? Thanks in advance for a kind help.
ASX
Posts: 988
Joined: Wed May 06, 2015 12:46 pm

Re: How to increase kernel messages resolution?

Post by ASX »

giocitta wrote:I'm a newbie as regards FreeBSD, but I've a very good experience with Gentoo. I would like to change in favor of GhostBSD because it is very well done and interesting. I installed it with MATE desktop on my PC (i7, Asus motherboard, 8GB ram, 2 scsi hard disks) on the entire second disk: all is OK. Anyhow, at boot, immediately after the grub screen, the kernel messages do appear too big starring "VT(vga); resolution=640x480", and so very unpleasant. I've an nvidia graphic card and nvidia-modeset.ko and nvidia.ko drivers are normally loaded. In fact, everything becomes perfect as soon as I enter into the GUI (working at 1920x1080). My problem is that I would change at boot from 640x480 to at least 1024x768, but how to do? Thanks in advance for a kind help.
Hi and welcome!
2 scsi hard disk
Really ?

Anyway, about boot screen res, it is not something we care about that much and it is not a priority. What I can tell you is that by booting using (U)EFI mode the screen resolution will be set to 1024x768.
HTH
kraileth
Posts: 312
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2016 12:30 pm

Re: How to increase kernel messages resolution?

Post by kraileth »

Hi giocitta!

I was pretty sure that this is a boot-time tunable but didn't remember where I read it off the top of my head. But I found it:

man 4 vt is what holds the information that you are looking for.

Basically you should try to set kern.vt.fb.default_mode to a higher resolution in /boot/loader.conf. Since you reported that the resolution is set to 640x480 KMS should be working and that tunable should do the trick.
giocitta
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Sep 05, 2017 5:25 am

Re: How to increase kernel messages resolution?

Post by giocitta »

Thanks, kraileth. As soon as I go back home I'll try your suggestion and inform you if successful or not.
giocitta
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Sep 05, 2017 5:25 am

Re: How to increase kernel messages resolution?

Post by giocitta »

Hi kraileth, I followed your suggestion, carefully read "man 4 vt", put 'kern.vt.fb.default_mode=1024x768"' in /boot/loader.conf, but it didn't work.

"vidcontrol -i mode" prints only the header line.
"dmesg | grep error" gives back "module_register_init: MOD_LOAD (vesa, 0x....., 0) error 19 ---- sysctl_unregister_oid: failed to unregister sysctl".

I tried many solution proposed online, but no success.
It's all very difficult for me, but not impossible.
Anyhow, many thanks!
P.S. Obviously, I'll try to go on.
ASX
Posts: 988
Joined: Wed May 06, 2015 12:46 pm

Re: How to increase kernel messages resolution?

Post by ASX »

I have hard times understanding why the boot text should be so important to justify all your efforts, because anyway ... it scroll so fast that will be however unreadable.
kraileth
Posts: 312
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2016 12:30 pm

Re: How to increase kernel messages resolution?

Post by kraileth »

giocitta wrote:Hi kraileth, I followed your suggestion, carefully read "man 4 vt", put 'kern.vt.fb.default_mode=1024x768"' in /boot/loader.conf, but it didn't work.

"vidcontrol -i mode" prints only the header line.
"dmesg | grep error" gives back "module_register_init: MOD_LOAD (vesa, 0x....., 0) error 19 ---- sysctl_unregister_oid: failed to unregister sysctl".

I tried many solution proposed online, but no success.
It's all very difficult for me, but not impossible.
Anyhow, many thanks!
P.S. Obviously, I'll try to go on.
Thanks for sharing that info. Phew, I would have expected it to just work. Well, maybe I'll find some free hardware (plus time at the weekend) to take a closer look at this.
ASX wrote:I have hard times understanding why the boot text should be so important to justify all your efforts, because anyway ... it scroll so fast that will be however unreadable.
Sometimes it's a matter of principle, right? Some things may not even be terribly important but if they ought to work and they don't it's quite dissatisfactory. ;)
giocitta
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Sep 05, 2017 5:25 am

Re: How to increase kernel messages resolution?

Post by giocitta »

Again thanks, kraileth, above all for your comment: "Sometimes it's a matter of principle, right? Some things may not even be terribly important but if they ought to work and they don't it's quite dissatisfactory". To control the console resolution is a piece of cake with Gentoo, and it would be truly "dissatisfactory" not to obtain it with a BSD-like OS! Furthermore, a 640x480 resolution obliges to continuously scroll horizontally and vertically to read each page of text.
ASX
Posts: 988
Joined: Wed May 06, 2015 12:46 pm

Re: How to increase kernel messages resolution?

Post by ASX »

If you really want to read the boot output, when you log in, there are a bunch of log files in /var/log to look at.
Beside that, as I already wrote, booting in EFI mode default to a 1024x768 text console.

What you are trying to do is emulating linux behaviour, irrespective is it is useful or not.
kraileth wrote:Sometimes it's a matter of principle, right?
No. But you both are free to waste your own time around a negligible output format.
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