Console resolution with vt

M

Moo

I am new to FreeBSD and setup a FreeBSD 12 on Virtual Box to see how it works.
The problem is its resolution after boot is 640x480.

As some articles suggest, add following line in /boot/loader.conf
Code: 
kern.vty=sc
then I can change to other modes after reboot with vidcontrol(8)

Is there a way to make this change happen without reboot? Or start another console with this setting?
I thought vt and sc are dirver? but kldstat does not show them. And they cannot be load/unload with kldload/kldunload

Another problem is how can I do similar things with vt.
Since vt replaces sc after 11.0, I think there should be some ways?
Currently following setting does not work.
Code: 
hw.vga.textmode=0
hw.vga.acpi_ignore_no_vag=1
i915kms_load="YES"
kern.vty=vt
kern.vt.fb.default_mode="1024x768"
 
Moo said:
Is there a way to make this change happen without reboot?
Click to expand...
No.
Or start another console with this setting?
Click to expand...
No, only one console driver can be active.

Moo said:
I thought vt and sc are dirver?
Click to expand...
They are, see vt(4) and sc(4)
but kldstat(8)does not show them.
Click to expand...
By default that command only shows dynamically linked modules, i.e. the ones that are kldload(8)'ed. kldstat -v will show them.
And They cannot be load/unload with kldload/kldunload
Click to expand...
They are statically linked into the kernel through the GENERIC kernel configuration and therefor cannot be unloaded.
 
I’m running one of my FreeBSD 12 installations also in a Virtual Box image. To get a higher resolution in FreeBSD console with vt in VirtualBox:

Edit: I just realized the hard disk image with EFI enabled on the systems motherboard needs to be created before installing FreeBSD. Sorry about that. It’s been a while since I created my image.

If you want to go through the inconvenience, setting up a new virtual machine and installing the system once again, first create the hard disk, and when we are already at it, create a SSD disk image, before installing FreeBSD.

After the initial setup of the virtual machine

- open the virtual machines Settings in VirtualBox
- go to the section System Motherboard
- check under Extended Features “Enable EFI”
(if you have asynchrony time display in FreeBSD to the host system check “Hardware Clock in UTC Time” as well)
- go to the Storage section in the settings
- click on the Controller:IDE
go down at the Storage Devices window and click on the far left icon with a plus
- chose Add SATA Controller
- at Controller: SATA click the right icon to add a hard disk
- in the opening drop down window "Choose existing disk"
- choose the FreeBSD image
- click on the FreeBSD image under Controller: SATA
- on the right side under Attributes check “Solid-state Drive”
- delete the FreeBSD image under Controller: IDE
- exit settings

- install FreeBSD ( I think it should be possible to create the new image, and copy the system from the original image to the new one, but for the sake of simplicity I proposed a fresh install)
- edit /boot/loader.conf, set efi_max_resolution=“1024x768”
- reboot
 
I got questions touching a similar problem.

On my systems radeonkms.ko is loaded by /etc/rc.conf.

I'd like to change the resolution and if possible the color of the console.

How would I apply kern.vt.fb.default_mode="800x600" to my /etc/rc.conf.

And is there a setting for colors?
 
I don't know about the radeon driver but regarding color support, you can change the 16 default colors in /boot/loader.conf:

Code: 
...
kern.vt.color.4.rgb="#458588" # Blue
kern.vt.color.5.rgb="#b16286" # Purple
kern.vt.color.6.rgb="#689d6a" # Aqua
...
 
bsd5543 said:
How would I apply kern.vt.fb.default_mode="800x600" to my /etc/rc.conf.
Click to expand...
Code: 
     In loader.conf(5):
     hw.vga.textmode=1
     kern.vty=vt
     kern.vt.color.<colornum>.rgb="<colorspec>"
     kern.vt.fb.default_mode="<X>x<Y>"
     kern.vt.fb.modes.<connector>="<X>x<Y>"
vt(4), loader.conf(5).
bsd5543 said:
And is there a setting for colors?
Click to expand...
Code: 
     kern.vt.color.colornum.rgb
             Set this value to override default palette entry for color
             colornum which should be in a range from 0 to 15 inclusive.  The
             value should be either a comma-separated triplet of red, green,
             and blue values in a range from 0 to 255 or HTML-like hex
             triplet.  See EXAMPLES below.
vt(4) again.
 
Thx, that worked just fine.

So I have to apply the settings in /boot/loader.conf although radeonkms.ko is started later by /etc/rc.conf.
 
No luck after some tries in vt.

I can use startx to enter xfce GUI environment (forgot where I installed this) without i915kms.
So I think this driver is not necessary?

And according to vt(4),
Code: 
     kern.vt.fb.default_mode
         Set this value to a graphic mode to override the default mode
         picked by the vt backend.    The mode is applied to all output con-
         nectors.  This is currently only supported    by the vt_fb backend
         when it is    paired with a KMS video    driver.

So before finding a KMS driver for this, I guess the way to show more information on terminal is to change the font...
 
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