Question: Setting display dimensions

[Jukka Ukkonen]

Hello all,

Recently I bought a small HDMI connected 1024x600 pixels TFT
display. It seems that 11-stable does not find the correct dimensions
automatically. The kernel apparently assumes the display to be far
larger than it actually is and a lot of text simply disappears below
the lower edge of the screen. So, I assumed there might be some 
method to tell the kernel the default dimensions to use when it fails
to confirm the actual values from the display device itself.

Now I would like to check whether I am interpreting things correctly.
Apparently there is kernel MIB variable for this purpose on 12.x series
(kern.vt.fb.default_mode) but not on 11.x. If this is true, I would like to
understand why is the feature not available on 11-stable as well?
Have I understood the meaning of the default_mode variable correctly
for 12.x and will it work properly for a 1024x600 display?

Moving over to 12-stable will not be a big issue on a new system, if
that is necessary, but I would like to avoid taking the effort of upgrade
unless I can be relatively sure it will solve my problem.

--jau