Text mode virtual terminals in normal monitor remain widescreen

[mmezo]

Virtual terminals in normal monitor remain widescreen and content is lost.

I just tried Dapper Flight 3 (AMD64) on a normal (4:3) monitor.

- The splash screen and installation were widescreen from the beginning (with black stripes on the top and bottom side of the screen), but it did work OK, as it the installer showed completely in the visible area.
- X displays normal filling the whole screen
- But text mode virtual terminals remain displayed as widescreen with two black stripes on the top and bottom of the screen making impossible to see what your are typing, because the "logical area" stretches to the bottom of the monitor.

For example you can type (blindly) #echo Hello World, and you have to hit return about three times to see what you wrote and the result.

If X doesn't start at all (because of some problem with hardware or because it is not told to) the problem is the same.

Hardware:
AMD64 Opteron (165)
nVidia nForce 6150 based motherboard (with integrated Video)
1Gb RAM
(I guess the rest doesn't matter too much).

[mmezo (mmezo)]

I forgot to say it was Kubuntu's dapper flight 3 the one I tried.

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

mmezo:

Are you using a CRT monitor?

If so it sounds like you need to enter your monitors control panel stretch the height of the screen when you are using a VT. Most modern CRTs remember different sizes for different resolutions (and even different refresh rates) so it shouldn't affect anything else.

As for X not starting that sounds different another issue and will have to be spun off into a bug of its own because bug reports can only contain one issue at a time.

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Punting to Ubuntu because this doesn't sound like a kernel issue and also setting to Needinfo pending a reply from mmezo .

[mmezo (mmezo)]

I'm using a flat pannel (TFT) monitor (via analog DSUB-15 interface, not digital DVI).

I'll attach some images that show the effect.

They are taken with a mobile phone camera and are of poor quality, but I hope it is enough to see the problem

The first one shows that X fills the whole screen correctly.

The second one shows that text mode virtual terminals leave two black stripes at the top and bottom of the screen. (I have "highlighted" them with two red lines).

The "viewport" is only the center of the screen, but text flows under both stripes and so does the command line, so you cannot see what you are typing because it happens below the bottom masked area.

I now have Dapper upgraded with the latest packages as of today (18/05/2006).

Lets see if I manage to attach the photos....

Marcos

[mmezo (mmezo)]

X Fills the whole screen as it should.

[mmezo (mmezo)]

Virtual terminal with black stripes and text flowing under them both at the top and at the bottom.

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Setting back to unconfirmed after mmezo's reply.

This could be down to the way your TFT shows non native resolutions. I guess you could try setting vesa=ask as a grub boot option and seeing if some are better than others...

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

mmezo:

One more question - are you using a VGA cable or a DVI cable to attach your monitor to your computer?

[mmezo (mmezo)]

I'm using a VGA cable.

I'll try to use another vga mode (but I should note that I have no vga=xxx option set in menu.lst)

I've never had any issues with other distros on the same monitor. The CPU is recent (dec. 2005) though, so I have only used it extensively with KUbuntu.

(I've used Debian and previously Mandrake and tried occasionaly SUSE, Fedora and CentOS)

[mmezo (mmezo)]

It seems the bug has to do with the vga mode the splash screen sets.

If I set vga mode = 0 (so text mode and as a side effect no splash screen) or if I delete the "splash" kernel parameter in grub, then text consoles work as expected, filling and letting you see the whole screen.

Can you or anybody else point me to where you can set the vga mode for the splash screen?

Thanks.

[Matthew Lange (matthewlange)]

That should be as an option in the bootloader (GRUB).

In /boot/grub/menu.lst:

Look for a line like this: (Generic example from http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-10877_11-5590770.html# , do not use)

root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz ro root=/dev/hdc5 vga=788
initrd /initrd.img

the vga= is where you set the graphics options, if there is no vga=, you can add it. I believe vga=788 is a setting you can use for compatibility with different monitors.

Before you change your menu.lst, I'd suggest trying it out first by opening up GRUB when your computer boots, and editing it there in the loader. Setting it there will only apply once, and is good to test, and will not leave you "stranded".

[mmezo (mmezo)]

First of all, thanks for your interest. I really apreciate it.

I knew I could change the vga mode in menu.lst and also temporarily by editing (pressing b) when booting. This is indeed what I have done to try it.

The thing is, if I leave my menu.lst untouched (default as per installed by kubuntu and succesive kernel updates) there is no vga=xxx option on the file. But inspite of it, the "splash" kernel option must be setting the vga mode on some other place. It's this place the one I was asking for.

Anyways, the workarround for me is removing the boot splash.

Thank you again for your interest.

Marcos

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

This sounds not disimilar to Bug #36047 ...

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Speculatively punting to usplash

[Matthew Garrett (mjg59)]

No, it's a kernel issue

[mmezo (mmezo)]

I've been doing a bit of research and I think it is either a usplash or a graphics driver problem.

My screen resolution on text mode terminals is 640x480 and I found this text in the wiki....

---------------------------------
How do I customize USplash?
Before starting, make sure you understand the following:
 The PNG must be: 640x400 16 colours. If you are using a different console mode, the image will be centered (both horizontally and verically) and ******* the area around it will be filled with the background colour (image's palette colour #0). ********
---------------------------------

This is exactly what happens in my case. I'm using 640x480 and the image is centered, so two 40 pixel height areas are filled with black on the top and bottom.

I'm going to try to make a customised usplash-image and let you know the results....

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

mmezo:

If you bring up your BIOS before your computer boots, does it have borders at the top and bottom too?

[Matthew Caron (matt-mattcaron)]

I have the same problem on 2 different machines, same monitor.

Machine 1 - Using ATI Radeon 9200 Card.
Machine 2 - Using ATI Rage 128 Card.

Both of these are hooked to Dell 2005FPW monitors (16:9 resolution) and exhibit the same "top and bottom cut off" issue. I am using the D-SUB/VGA connection.

A third machine, using some variety of ATI card (not sure which), does not have this issue, using the DVI connection.

I should also note that in all cases, the BIOS displays fine.

Both of the above machines did not have this issue under previous versions of Ubuntu. They have run both Hoary and Breezy with this monitor. This problem only started with dapper.

I will try disabling bootsplash and seeing if it helps.

[Matthew Caron (matt-mattcaron)]

This appears to be fixed in Feisty. I vote we close this.

[Gareth Fitzworthington (mapping-gp-deactivatedaccount)]

This bug has had no activity for a considerable period. This is a check to see if there is still interest in considering this bug report.

[Gareth Fitzworthington (mapping-gp-deactivatedaccount)]

Closing.