Bug 184

Summary:	RedHat 5.2 makes laptop font slightly unreadable
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	Michael Meissner <meissner>
Component:	initscripts	Assignee:	Preston Brown <pbrown>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	5.2
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	1999-02-05 17:35:00 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Michael Meissner 1998-11-24 15:29:37 UTC

I have a Toshiba 420CDT laptop (40 meg of memory, 2 gig
disk, 100 Mhz Pentium, 800x600 screen).  It was running
RedHat 5.1 just fine.  I upgraded to 5.2, and immediately
after fsck'ing the disks, something changes in the font
used that makes it less clear.  I'm not sure I can explain
it, except that it looks like when the 640x480 mode is
displayed at 800x600, or when a computer tries to make a
bold font by overlaying the font at one pixel difference.
This happens whether I use the normal boot, or boot into
single user mode.  It also happens when I build a custom
kernel, or even boot 2.1.129.  This did not happen in
RedHat 5.1.

Comment 1 Michael Meissner 1998-11-27 00:05:59 UTC

I debugged it further, and I believe that if /etc/sysconfig/i18n is
not defined (ie, the user has not chosen a default font), then in the
script /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit, /sbin/setfont should not be called.  Thus
whatever font is loaded by the bios will still be used, rather than
always using default8x16.gz as the font.  Also, as a side note, the
call to setfont should really be traced to the op console like just
about everything else is during the boot process.

Comment 2 Bill Nottingham 1999-02-05 17:35:59 UTC

In the latest initscripts release (3.84), setsysfont is
called only if a particular font is set in /etc/sysconfig/i18n.

Comment 3 Mike McCune 2022-07-08 17:15:31 UTC

Upon review of our valid but aging backlog the Satellite Team has concluded that this Bugzilla does not meet the criteria for a resolution in the near term, and are planning to close in a month. This message may be a repeat of a previous update and the bug is again being considered to be closed. If you have any concerns about this, please contact your Red Hat Account team.  Thank you.