Stupid Linux Tricks

[Chong Yu Meng]

Hi all, 

Not sure how useful this "trick" is to people on this list, and probably
some people on this list already know this trick, but it took me a long
time before I found out about it:

If you have a monitor that can support higher than 640x480 resolution,
you may want the monitor to display more information during boot (i.e.
use smaller font sizes, so more lines can be displayed on your screen). 

You need to determine the maximum resolution that your monitor can
support, then cross-reference the table below to determine the correct
VGA code to use:

	|          R E S O L U T I O N		   |
	+-------------------------------------------
 COLORS	| 640X480 | 800X600 | 1024X768 | 1280X1024 |
+-------+-------------------------------------------
| 256   | 0X301   | 0X303   | 0X305    | 0X307     |
+-------+-------------------------------------------
| 32K   | 0X310   | 0X313   | 0X316    | 0X319     |
+-------+-------------------------------------------
| 64k   | 0X311   | 0X314   | 0X317    | 0X31A	   |
+-------+-------------------------------------------
| 16M   | 0X312   | 0X315   | 0X318    | 0X31B     |
+-------+-------------------------------------------

The table is not my own, but comes from some authoritative source which
was not mentioned in the newsgroup post where I found this gem.

After you get the code that corresponds to the color and resolution you
want, you need to add the code as a kernel parameter in
your /etc/grub.conf. For example, on my notebook, the monitor can
support up to 1024x768. I want just 256-color support, so this yields
the code 0x305. 

I then locate the line in /etc/grub.conf and append the "vga=" parameter
next to it. Like so:

title Fedora Core (2.6.16-1.2107_FC5)
        root (hd0,2)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.16-1.2107_FC5 ro
root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 vga=0x305


The next time you boot, you will see a cute Tux logo appear in the top
left corner of your screen and the font will be smaller.

One word of warning: I read somewhere that this parameter can cause
serious problems on some monitors, and some monitors (Dell?) require
vga=731 to work. What 731 refers to, I have no idea. 

Anyway, hope this helps somebody out there. It took me long enough
(about 5 years) to find it. 

Regards,
pascal chong