Gentlepeople, I am having some difficulty setting my console into 80x50 text mode. I have tried this on RH7.1 (2 different PCs, kernel 2.4.6) and Debain Woody (1 PC, kernel 2.2.20). (Incidentally, the Debian system has defaulted to some sort of 30 line mode but I don't remember requesting it during installation). In the past, a Mandrake 7.2 setup prompted me at boot to set the appropriate mode which worked for a while during the boot but appeared to be reset (to 80x25) once the console login appeared. In the dim dark past, I remember a Slackware install asking me about setting the default font and choosing a font which gave me the desired result and this carried through to the console (i.e. worked as I expected). So how hard can this be? In DOS, Windows it is really easy. I have just spent hours trying to set this mode and I now give up and am asking.
Before you rush in and answer, be aware that I have (to some extent RTFM) and have tried adding a line to my lilo.conf (vga=ask, vga=enhanced) neither of which did anything. There is a command (vidmode) which looks like it actually goes and patches the kernel. The manual entry on this warned against using this command and so I left it alone as it seemed to have an offset parameter which was not fully explained (did I or did I not need to specify it, although it was bracketed as optional). In the final analysis, I wanted to continue booting my system (I am not really up to kernel hacking yet). I have seen mention a command, svgatextmode, which is not on my system. Some documentation seems to imply that I have to recompile the kernel to enable this mode. I do *not* want to recompile the kernel and don't believe that it should be necessary to do such a simple thing. I have looked at terminal definitions and startup scripts (there is a LINES=25 (30 on the Debian system) in my environment but I couldn't see where it was set and anyway it probably needs a command to set the hardware), and I now have a headache trying to follow all this stuff. Please tell me I am a goose and this is really simple, you just have to... TIA. Brendan -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
