Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2016 14:37:49 -0700 From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@tristatelogic.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Fonts for vt(4) driver? Message-ID: <55924.1460151469@server1.tristatelogic.com> In-Reply-To: <55065.1460139818@server1.tristatelogic.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
I googled around a bit more and found some helpful information on
this topic:
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/49601/
Adding the line:
hw.vga.textmode=1
to my /boot/loader.conf file did indeed fix the problem that I asked
about, however the discussion at the above thread raised some new
questions in my mind.
Specifically, as noted in the above cited thread, one author noted,
correctly, that if one puts the line "hw.vga.textmode=1" into the
loader.conf file, then the console fonts you get on boot up look
very normal, e.g. to people like me who are accustomed to what the
console fonts looked like in older FreeBSD releases. However if
you then start up X, and then exit X, the fonts which you then see
on the console are still very normal looking, but they are then
quite a bit smaller (pointsize wise) than before.
Some people, e.g. one of the people who posted to the above cited
thread, didn't like this. He felt that the point size of the font
that he saw on the console after exiting X was too small for his
pleasure. I myself have the exact opposite opinion. I would like
to have the point size of my console font be small, even _before_
I start and then exit X. How can I accomplish this?
I tried to figure out the answer to this question on my own, but
failed. Based on various comments in various threads, I got the
impression that perhaps all I needed to do was to add the following
line to my loader.conf file:
radeonkms_load="YES"
(Yes, the system in question contains an AMD APU, which in turn
contains a Radeon GPU.)
Anyway, I added that line to the top of my loader.conf file and then
rebooted. The result was perfectly awful. The screen (an ASUS 1920x1080
24 inch monitor) seemed to have been put into 1920x1080 graphics mode,
however the whole screen was just filled with random pixels of random
colors. (Ultimatedly I had to boot FreeBSD off of a USB stick so that
I could edit loader.conf and remove the troublesome radeonkms_load="YES"
line, just to get the system in question back to a usaable state.)
So anyway, three questions:
1) What did I do wrong? Why did adding radeonkms_load="YES" to the
loader.conf file result in a completely unusable system?
2) Is it possible to have freeBSD boot up and use nice small pointsize
fonts immediately (on a modern 1920x1080 monitor, and with Radeon graphics
hardware)?
3) If so, how would one do this?
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?55924.1460151469>