From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from lists.gentoo.org ([140.105.134.102] helo=robin.gentoo.org) by nuthatch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1H1xRj-0004uE-9m for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Wed, 03 Jan 2007 04:09:47 +0000 Received: from robin.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.13.8/8.13.8) with SMTP id l0346ZIO017265; Wed, 3 Jan 2007 04:06:35 GMT Received: from ciao.gmane.org (main.gmane.org [80.91.229.2]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id l0346YnG029998 for ; Wed, 3 Jan 2007 04:06:34 GMT Received: from list by ciao.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.43) id 1H1xOc-0004TK-2L for gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org; Wed, 03 Jan 2007 05:06:34 +0100 Received: from ip68-231-13-122.ph.ph.cox.net ([68.231.13.122]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Wed, 03 Jan 2007 05:06:34 +0100 Received: from 1i5t5.duncan by ip68-231-13-122.ph.ph.cox.net with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Wed, 03 Jan 2007 05:06:34 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org From: Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> Subject: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Terminal control codes Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2007 04:06:24 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: References: <20070102170933.15EE52B6F39@smtp.nildram.co.uk> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: ip68-231-13-122.ph.ph.cox.net User-Agent: pan 0.120 (Plate of Shrimp) Sender: news X-Archives-Salt: ba2b2aa6-5fb2-49df-ae39-0f42446f2c2c X-Archives-Hash: 37fcd2fa433144ff72fa5ba3ceaa584f "Peter Humphrey" posted 20070102170933.15EE52B6F39@smtp.nildram.co.uk, excerpted below, on Tue, 02 Jan 2007 17:09:28 +0000: > Somewhere in the documents I read that the size of the scrollback > buffer can be declared in a kernel command, something like > "fbcon=scrollback:1024k. When I do that though, the kernel boots ok but > scrollback is disabled. Naturally, something like fbcon would require a framebuffer console, a kernel (pre-compile) config option. For VGACON... You may be looking for the video= parameters, in particular video=scrollback. See section 5.2 of the bootprompt HOWTO, here: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/text/BootPrompt-HOWTO. However, IIRC the kernel folks dramatically increased the default recently, and with kernel 2.6.19 at least (I think it was before that but can't remember when), I've been able to eliminate that parameter from my grub.conf entirely, and had to go look it up. I can now scrollback the /entire/ boot sequence, from the login prompt, all the way back thru where init and the Gentoo initscripts take over, back thru the many pages of kernel init itself, and even before that, where grub prints its last output as it loads the kernel before switching to it. I'd never seen those lines before, as they are normally scrolled off the top of the screen by the first kernel messages before the monitor even resets from the grub menu graphic mode! There are a couple caveats, however. First, switching between VCs loses the scrollback context, so all you have is what's actually on the screen. Second and this is what was actually preventing me scrolling back further for awhile, if you reset the console font (Gentoo's consolefont service), it resets the scroll buffer. Since the consolefont service starts relatively late in the process, using it means you lose most of the boot-time scrollback, altho you can still get most of the info from syslog and/or dmesg -- but not that last bit of grub output! =8^( In addition to setting vga=0x0133 for a normal 132x44 character console (720x400 px), I /had/ been setting the consolefont to gr737c-8x6, giving me an even higher resolution while still very readable, but I've disabled that now, sticking with 132x44, so I can scrollback the entire boot when necessary. 132x44 is good enough for the CLI VC. If I need more than that, I'll start KDE and use konsole. There may be a way to compile that font into the kernel and use it by default, but I'm not advanced enough to know how to do it, so... -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman -- gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list