Quick way to have a nicer console

Update 1/28/11: There’s an easier way to do this in Ubuntu 10.10
http://the.zachchadwick.com/post/2976114502/ubuntu-10-10-nicer-console

I am starting to virtualize a lot of my development machines that are filling my closet.  Most of them just need to run quietly in the background and not do too much by way of the GUI.  VirtualBox is great for this.

Instead of booting them all into a GUI, I usually just install a CLI-only system, but run into the problem of the default 80x25 console being pretty ugly and restrictive.  I started down the framebuffer rat-hole, to discover grub2 has totally changed how it works.

Even after making those changes, VirtualBox will change resolution, but then only a blank-screen. Not giving up, I happened upon a much easier solution using the uvesafb module and a little utility called v86d.

Add this line to your /etc/modules:

uvesafb mode_option=1024x768-16

And on Ubuntu machines, install v86d

sudo apt-get install v86d

Reboot the machine and you’ll have a much nicer console, all in 2 lines of code.  Sure beats trying to figure out all the hoops you need to jump through for framebuffer support - especially if all you’re after is nicer text.

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  1. zachad posted this