Changing Console Resolution - Vidcontrol

[John Nielsen]

On Monday 02 April 2007 01:55:45 pm Schiz0 wrote:
> I'm wondering how you can increase the resolution of the console in FreeBSD
> stable. I have read the man page on vidcontrol and googled around a bit,
> but I'm still confused about what to do. I'm currently running FreeBSD in
> VMWare on a windows machine (But that'll change as soon as I learn enough
> to put it up my server, which currently runs linux). I'd like to have
> something like 1024x768 resolution or so. Also, the man pages mention
> something about VESA modules. What exactly is this, and do I need it? My
> kernel is currently compiled without support for it. Would I need to
> recompile my kernel again?

Without recompiling your kernel, you should be able to do modes like:
# vidcontrol -f 8x8 cp437-8x8.fnt VGA_80x50
# vidcontrol -f 8x8 cp437-8x8.fnt VGA_80x60

If you add "options VGA_WIDTH90" to your kernel you can do things like:
# vidcontrol -f 8x8 cp437-8x8.fnt VGA_90x50
# vidcontrol -f 8x8 cp437-8x8.fnt VGA_90x60
(note that not all hardware likes the 90-column modes)

And if you add "options VESA" and "options SC_PIXEL_MODE" to your kernel you 
can use any fontsize (of the three: 8x16, 8x14, 8x8) with any VESA video mode 
supported by your hardware. You get a list of modes by running "vidcontrol -i 
mode" from a virtual terminal. On my machine mode 279 is 1024x768x16. If I 
wanted to use that with an 8x14 font I'd do this:
# vidcontrol -f 8x14 cp437-8x14.fnt MODE_279

JN