VGA not displaying bottom line of terminal and fonts size is too small

Hi Amigos,

I'm very very very new to linux.
I've installed linux fedora 17 (minimal installation with no GUI) and I have 2 problems:

1. When I hook my computer to a VGA screen I can't see the bottom command line.
I use "clear" command to clean the screen and move the command line to the top of the screen but it only helps on terminal screen but not in vi since the commands are always written in the bottom of the screen.
I need some help with trying to configure my VGA output from within linux since even when I adjust the screen resolution or position via the screen it seems like the VGA doesn't even send the bottom line to the screen so no matter how I resize it, it is still missing.

2. The font size is too small, I want to increase the size of the font but can't seem to find where to adjust that.

Please help me out dear friends...

Thanks,
Guy.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GuyNimni

Hi Amigos

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Hola and bienvenidos! (i think i said that right)

Quote:

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1. When I hook my computer to a VGA screen I can't see the bottom command line.
I use "clear" command to clean the screen and move the command line to the top of the screen but it only helps on terminal screen but not in vi since the commands are always written in the bottom of the screen.
I need some help with trying to configure my VGA output from within linux since even when I adjust the screen resolution or position via the screen it seems like the VGA doesn't even send the bottom line to the screen so no matter how I resize it, it is still missing.

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You can try disabling VGA mode-setting in the kernel at boot time. Reboot, and at the grub boot prompt, use the up/down arrow keys to highlight your desired kernel. Then press "e" to Edit the kernel entry. Then arrow down to the "linux" line and press the "end" key (or arrow right) to the end of this line. Remove anything that says splash quiet and in its place put vga=normal nomodeset. Then press F10 to boot with these modified parameters.

Quote:

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2. The font size is too small, I want to increase the size of the font but can't seem to find where to adjust that.

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You can pass a terminal font size using kernel parameters. Edit the kernel entry in grub as in above, only this time, instead of vga=normal, use vga=0x318. This will set the console to 1024x768 at 16M colors. See here for a full list:

http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/fb/vesafb.txt

Instead of specifying the mode, you can say vga=ask and you will be prompted to select modes from a list. Note that doing it this way will not allow you to select graphic (VESA) modes, only simpler text modes (which may be what you want).

Hi dear atreyu,

I must say, I envy you (in a good way... :D)
I wish I knew half of the things you seem to understand deeply.

Thanks a lot for your answer, I'll return home from work in a couple of hours and try running your steps.
Will keep you posted later.

Thanks !

Dear atreyu,

Status report.

I changed the font size in the i18n file and it solved both of my problems.

God bless you and thank you for your help !

Peace...

Excellent. That's a good idea. For other readers, do you mean this file?

Code:

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/etc/sysconfig/i18n

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Also, out of curiosity, what font did you supply and how did you determine which one to use? By default, my systems use latarcyrheb-sun16 and it is fine.

Yep,

I read in other places over the internet about font "sun12x22".

I tried it and it worked like magic, the bottom line that was missing on my 37" TV screen is now always visible no matter how low I get.

This might help other people since I was looking for an answer for a couple of days and didn't find one.

Thanks for your help atreyu !

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GuyNimni

I read in other places over the internet about font "sun12x22".

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On Red Hat systems (Fedora, CentOS, SL, e.g.), you can usually find the full list of available console fonts here:

Code:

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/lib/kbd/consolefonts/

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These fonts are installed by the kbd and kbd-misc packages.

This command should generate usable fonts in the SYSFONT variable in the /etc/sysconfig/i18n file:

Code:

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find /lib/kbd/consolefonts/ -type f -name '*.gz' -printf "%f\n"|cut -f1 -d.|sort

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I remember killing time once long ago, testing out a bunch of these...