Recently, I need to test a program in linux. The program is running on console mode (xwindows is not started). Screen resolution is 640×480. Only 25 lines of charaster can be displayed. I feel sick to scroll up and down all the time to find out some information. is there any way to make it display more than 25 lines in the linux console mode. I guest, changing the screen resolution may solve this problem!?? Am I right?

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I'm assuming it's 80 characters wide x 25 characters down which is standard Linux terminal size. It does seem it'll be a slim chance that you could change it, although I know you can definitely change it, I don't think that it's display would be great.

If you know your program will go over the 25 lines limit run it with | more,

e.g. ./yourprogram | more

and this will prompt you to press a key to display more, space bar moves down a whole page.

If you do however want to try it out, I'll will tell you how to configure it.

Cheers,


MC

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Of course you can change it

You send a message to the kernel telling it to use th VESA framebuffer for consoles.
if you re old enough, you will remember that the vesa frame buffer was used before X11 to display graphical games like Quake..

here's how it works...
as root, with your faveorite text editor, open up the file "/boot/grub/menu.lst"

you should see somthing similar to this...



you need to add the following t the end of the line that begins with the word "kernel"



0x318 is a kernel resolution code.
any resolution between 600x480 and 1600xSomthing
is possable, but will be limited by your craphics cards and monitors maximum.

0x318 is the mode i use, and gives me approxamatly 50 lines of console..
i think the maximum readable lins is 80, after that the text gets too small.

you will need to keep trying different resolution codes untill you find one that A: is supported by your craphics card. B: is a comfortable font size for you.

here is a list o resolution codes...

taken from http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Framebuffer-HOWTO-5.html section 5.3
if the following table doesnt line up / isnt readable, click this link.



You can do som pretty cool things with the frame buffer.
like for example a booting splash screen, with a scroll bar (similar to that used bu windowsXP while its booting)

anyway.. this SHOULD work... it may not if you are using a very old linux distro, or you compiled the kernel yourself, and removed vesa framebuffer support.

enjoy !

 

 

 

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Thanks guys...

I just added vga=0x303 to the end of the line that begins with the word "kernel" in grub.conf.
And it really works fine.

It is cool when open "multi-windows" in emacs after I set it to 1024x768

A logo appear when the system is booting.
Thats very cool..

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thats nothing...

have a look at these consoles (just plain connsoles, X is not running)
http://dhruba.codewordt.co.uk/images/2.6-bs.jpg
http://dhruba.codewordt.co.uk/images/small_fonts_fb.png
http://dhruba.codewordt.co.uk/images/bootsplash.png

anyways, glad to hear it all worked.

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