Virtual Terminal has seen better days

[Mike]

Folks,

I'm trying to resolve a long standing issue with my virtual consoles.
They're just a bit messed up.

The most pressing issue is that when I boot, after Grub, I get some
miminal output on the screen and then the screen turns off. If I
blindly enter my userid and password and then type startx, the monitor
turns back on and X works in beautiful 4k glory.

I do get a bit of output to say that a couple of services failed to
start, so it seems that the monitor goes into power off just before the
login prompt should be displayed.

I had a fiddle with a setting in Grub which I think was probably the
wrong place and also /etc/default/console-setup, which sounds like a
sensible place to fiddle, although it didn't make any difference.

I'd be grateful if anyone could give me any pointers to get the
terminals looking vaguely sensible, please? I think the first isse it
working out how to stop the screen turning off, which I assume is
because the display is out of range for the monitor. I can't seen to
figure out how to change that.

It would perhaps be nice too to tidy up the systemd output but probably
best to get the display on first to aid debugging that.

If anyone could offer any pointers, I would be really grateful.

Kind regards,
Mike.

[Michael Kjörling]

Post by Mike
I'd be grateful if anyone could give me any pointers to get the
terminals looking vaguely sensible, please? I think the first isse it
working out how to stop the screen turning off, which I assume is
because the display is out of range for the monitor. I can't seen to
figure out how to change that.

That would be the first thing I would want to rule out, too.

In GRUB, try "e"diting the boot command sequence and on IIRC the
"kernel" line (the one that specifies the kernel and kernel
parameters), add one of vga=0; vga=0x0f04 (leave current settings); or
vga=ask followed by "scan" at the prompt and then select a reasonable
one. See https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/svga.html.

In /etc/default/console-setup, try setting VIDEOMODE to the empty
string. See console-setup(5).

[Mike]

Post by Michael Kjörling

Post by Mike
I'd be grateful if anyone could give me any pointers to get the
terminals looking vaguely sensible, please? I think the first isse it
working out how to stop the screen turning off, which I assume is
because the display is out of range for the monitor. I can't seen to
figure out how to change that.

That would be the first thing I would want to rule out, too.
In GRUB, try "e"diting the boot command sequence and on IIRC the
"kernel" line (the one that specifies the kernel and kernel
parameters), add one of vga=0; vga=0x0f04 (leave current settings); or
vga=ask followed by "scan" at the prompt and then select a reasonable
one. See https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/svga.html.
In /etc/default/console-setup, try setting VIDEOMODE to the empty
string. See console-setup(5).

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback. I have found both of these settings but they
haven't helped too much. The /etc/default/console-setup, VIDEOMODE line
was oringally blank, so I tried setting it and it made no difference.

Likewise, fiddling with the display modes in grub didn't help too much
either. I think the max mode I could run, according to vbeinfo or
whatever is was is 1080p, so I chose that. I think it was auto
selecting that already.

Thinking back, I seem to recall the issue with the screen turning off
started after I switched from Nouveau to the Nvidia driver. It fixed
the issue I had with X but broke my console.

Regards,
Mike.

[Anssi Saari]

Post by Mike
Thinking back, I seem to recall the issue with the screen turning off
started after I switched from Nouveau to the Nvidia driver. It fixed
the issue I had with X but broke my console.

I think I had a similar issue some years ago and these two lines
/etc/default/grub helped:

GRUB_GFXMODE=1920x1080x32
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep

The latter especially. And yes, I'm also using Nvidia proprietary
drivers.

[Felix Miata]

Post by Michael Kjörling

Post by Mike
I'd be grateful if anyone could give me any pointers to get the
terminals looking vaguely sensible, please? I think the first isse it
working out how to stop the screen turning off, which I assume is
because the display is out of range for the monitor. I can't seen to
figure out how to change that.

That would be the first thing I would want to rule out, too.
In GRUB, try "e"diting the boot command sequence and on IIRC the
"kernel" line (the one that specifies the kernel and kernel
parameters), add one of vga=0; vga=0x0f04 (leave current settings); or
vga=ask followed by "scan" at the prompt and then select a reasonable
one. See https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/svga.html.

The following applies with all FOSS drivers I've ever used except possibly mga:
vga= only works until KMS starts. video= does the desired job while KMS is
engaged. e.g.

video=DP-1:***@60

Causes 1440x900 with refresh 60Hz to be applied only to DP-1. Leave off DP-1: to
have it applied to all displays. Leave off @60 to allow the system to determine
refresh.

https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/fb/modedb.txt

[Mike]

Post by Felix Miata

Post by Michael Kjörling

Post by Mike
I'd be grateful if anyone could give me any pointers to get the
terminals looking vaguely sensible, please? I think the first isse it
working out how to stop the screen turning off, which I assume is
because the display is out of range for the monitor. I can't seen to
figure out how to change that.

That would be the first thing I would want to rule out, too.
In GRUB, try "e"diting the boot command sequence and on IIRC the
"kernel" line (the one that specifies the kernel and kernel
parameters), add one of vga=0; vga=0x0f04 (leave current settings); or
vga=ask followed by "scan" at the prompt and then select a reasonable
one. See https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/svga.html.

vga= only works until KMS starts. video= does the desired job while KMS is
engaged. e.g.
Causes 1440x900 with refresh 60Hz to be applied only to DP-1. Leave off DP-1: to
refresh.
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/fb/modedb.txt
--
Evolution as taught in public schools is, like religion,
based on faith, not based on science.
Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Hi Felix,

Thanks for your input. I tried the video= and it made no difference.
However, I did discover that removing "quiet" creates a lot more output.
Funny that, isn't it? Quite nice too!

I should probably have mentioned earlier, that if one launches X and
then quits X to return to the terminal, the monitor does not turn off
again, howeer, the mode is a bit crazy. It appears to display 80x25 but
when one starts a new line at line 25, you do not get the usualy
scrolling behaviour, things just appear to get printed out "below the
monitor" if you know what I mean. Eventually the screen does scroll but
after maybe 200 lines or so and it does so in a big jump.

I seem to recall reading that the Nvidia driver was a bit cavalier and
reinvented various parts of X, so I wondered if there was some crazyness
whereby starting X started some of a necessary components of the driver.
Checking the output of lsmod, as well as ps for anything nvidia related
doesn't appear to be any difference between before X and after X.

I'm also pondering if it's something to do with the port it's plugged
into. The card has 3 DP ports and 1 HDMI. Two have displayed plugged
into them. That said, the UEFI manages to output to a screen and so
does Grub / Kernel, so does X, so one would imagine the bit in the
middle might get it right too?

Any ideas?

Kind regards,
Mike.

[Felix Miata]

Post by Mike

Post by Felix Miata
vga= only works until KMS starts. video= does the desired job while KMS is
engaged. e.g.
Causes 1440x900 with refresh 60Hz to be applied only to DP-1. Leave off DP-1: to
refresh.
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/fb/modedb.txt

I tried the video= and it made no difference.

...

Post by Mike
Any ideas?

How many tries? More than one refresh? Without refresh? With other resolutions?
Without limit to one port?

Post by Mike
I seem to recall reading that the Nvidia driver was a bit cavalier and
reinvented various parts of X, so I wondered if there was some crazyness

It wouldn't surprise me at all. I didn't see you mention NVidia's driver before
now. I would search for and/or bring this issue up on NVidia's forum site. I have
no ideas how VT output is managed with proprietary drivers engaged.

Maybe this is one of those cases where nosimplefb=1 is needed on cmdline?