How to decrease the ttyX screen area?

Guenzl · November 20, 2014, 12:55am

Hi to experts,

it is not about a choice of font and not the X11 console.
It’s about the tty1 to tty6 virtual consoles.

It has worked for me for many years that the screen-writing surface
does not occupied the full monitor screen, that the text is not up to
the black plastic edges of the monitor went, but that this tty writing
surfaces was lightly - but significantly - smaller than the whole
physical screen area of the monitor.

SuSE provides automatically – vary by monitor – the entire monitor
area for the tty. Where does this happen? How do you say SuSE that
only for the tty the monitor´s writing surface should be smaller.
X11 is to occupy the full screen of the monitor real of course.

I believe that this reduced writing surface was seen at boot time;
so boot configuration will solve my problem? What is the relationship
between grub2 and ttyX?

I do not remember how I did it at the time.
Does you know how this is to be done?

Thanks for clues
Werner.

malcolmlewis · November 20, 2014, 2:04am

Hi
That is set via the Bootloader via vga mode in the kernel parameters tab, else you can change the columns and rows with the stty command, eg;


stty size
48 170m
stty cols 100 rows 40

You may need to investigate kms (kernel setting mode) as well…

Guenzl · November 20, 2014, 12:48pm

Thank you for the quick reply.

“stty cols 100 rows 40” which does not have the desired effect.
The text still stucks at the top and left plastic edge of the monitor.

I mean, I did the change with the boot configuration, in YaST =>
System => Bootloader. But how/where?

I find “kms” neither in the SUSE nor in the PACKMAN repositories.

Regards,
Werner.

Guenzl · November 21, 2014, 2:39pm

So I have tried:

In /etc/default/grub
GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768 (in hwinfo --framebuffer: width/high=1,33)
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD=keep

This GFXMODE appears briefly at the beginning of the boot process
– with the desired distance to the black plastic edges of the monitor --,
but falls back within the “normal” mode; no “keeping”.

Why that? How can I get the desired effect to the consoles tty1 to tty6?

Werner.

malcolmlewis · November 21, 2014, 2:55pm

On Fri 21 Nov 2014 01:46:01 PM CST, Guenzl wrote:

So I have tried:

In /etc/default/grub
GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768 (in hwinfo --framebuffer: width/high=1,33)
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD=keep

This GFXMODE appears briefly at the beginning of the boot process
– with the desired distance to the black plastic edges of the monitor
–,
but falls back within the “normal” mode; no “keeping”.

Why that? How can I get the desired effect to the consoles tty1 to tty6?

Werner.

Hi
You might have to disable kms as well, try booting with the grub option
nomodeset. Not sure how that will affect your desktop environment
though. If you just add temporarily at boot via editing the grub
options, advanced and press e to edit.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.28-4-default
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!

Guenzl · November 21, 2014, 3:18pm

Thanks for the quick reply.

That´s the problem. X11-desktop is now also smaller.
I just want only the ttyX smaller

malcolmlewis · November 21, 2014, 3:35pm

On Fri 21 Nov 2014 02:26:01 PM CST, Guenzl wrote:

Thanks for the quick reply.
malcolmlewis;2677825 Wrote:
>
> Not sure how that will affect your desktop environment
> though.
That´s the problem. X11-desktop is now also smaller.
I just want only the ttyX smaller

Hi
So what graphics card is in play?

If you run the command xrandr in your X11 desktop, does it give a list
of resolutions you can use, if so, use xrandr -s to set.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.28-4-default
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!

Guenzl · November 21, 2014, 6:13pm

I have a ZOTAC GeForce GTX 480 graphic card and with openSUSE-13.2
xrandr

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192
DVI-I-1 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 509mm x 286mm
1920x1080 60.00*+ 50.00 59.94
1920x1080i 60.00 50.00 59.94
1600x1200 60.00
1680x1050 59.88
1280x1024 75.02 60.02
1440x900 74.98 59.90
1280x960 60.00
1280x800 59.91
1152x864 75.00
1280x720 60.00 50.00 59.94
1024x768 75.08 70.07 60.00
832x624 74.55
800x600 72.19 75.00 60.32 56.25
720x576 50.00
720x480 60.00 59.94
640x480 75.00 72.81 66.67 60.00 59.94
720x400 70.08
DVI-I-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

“xrandr -s 1024x768” the X11 desktop becomes smaller, not the tty consoles.

What do I have to do?

nomodeset to write in the kernel parameters to reduce the tty surface
xrandr -s 1920x1080 to expand the X11 desktop

Is it so?

malcolmlewis · November 21, 2014, 6:24pm

Hi
So what driver is the gfx card using with or without nomodeset?


hwinfo --gfxcard

Well it’s a workaround, AFAIK, you should be able to tweak the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d files with the screen modelines, but you probably need to start a new thread about that to glean that information from the forum experts on X11

gogalthorp · November 21, 2014, 6:30pm

Set the thing to get the tty res you want then use xrandr to set the GUI res. Trick is to get things in the right order in the boot process

wolfi323 · November 21, 2014, 6:42pm

I wouldn’t recommend to set “nomodeset” at all, as this will disable the correct X graphics driver for your card.

Did you run “sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.config” after your change to /etc/default/grub?
You should be able to set the console resolution in YaST->System->Boot Loader->Kernel Parameters as well, with the “console Resolution” setting (“Use graphical console” should be enabled as well).

Guenzl · November 21, 2014, 6:49pm

So here is my hwinfo --gfxcard:


36: PCI 300.0: 0300 VGA compatible controller (VGA)
  [Created at pci.328]
  Unique ID: svHJ.wmhO879R1oD
  Parent ID: 3hqH._4Jk6Hys5IC
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.0/0000:03:00.0
  SysFS BusID: 0000:03:00.0
  Hardware Class: graphics card
  Model: "nVidia GF100 [GeForce GTX 480]"
  Vendor: pci 0x10de "nVidia Corporation"
  Device: pci 0x06c0 "GF100 [GeForce GTX 480]"
  SubVendor: pci 0x10de "nVidia Corporation"
  SubDevice: pci 0x075f 
  Revision: 0xa3
  Driver: "nouveau"
  Driver Modules: "drm"
  Memory Range: 0xf8000000-0xf9ffffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
  Memory Range: 0xd8000000-0xdfffffff (ro,non-prefetchable)
  Memory Range: 0xd4000000-0xd7ffffff (ro,non-prefetchable)
  I/O Ports: 0xcc00-0xcc7f (rw)
  Memory Range: 0xfbc00000-0xfbc7ffff (ro,non-prefetchable,disabled)
  IRQ: 75 (809281 events)
  I/O Ports: 0x3c0-0x3df (rw)
  Module Alias: "pci:v000010DEd000006C0sv000010DEsd0000075Fbc03sc00i00"
  Driver Info #0:
    Driver Status: nouveau is active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe nouveau"
  Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
  Attached to: #11 (PCI bridge)

Primary display adapter: #36

Now all is without nomodeset.

malcolmlewis · November 21, 2014, 6:54pm

Hi
I think the OP tried that, after boot though (in my case I set console to 800x600) grub shows at 800x600, however when you press ctrl+alt+Fn the tty’s are at rows and columns for my desktop, in my case 1366x768 or 48x170…

Guenzl · November 22, 2014, 1:00pm

Please see further:
https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/502867-GRUB_MODE-has-no-effect-on-tty1-to-tty6-consoles?p=2678078#post2678078

Werner.