Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 114877
Fonts on gdm graphical login screen are too small to read
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:10:35 EST
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322) Description of problem: I just completed installing Fedora Core 1. When the system comes up in runlevel 5 the gdm graphical greeter screen is displayed. However, the fonts displayed (for username/password prompts, etc.) are extremely small and cannot be read. I logged in as root and ran gdmconfig and changed the local greeter to the standard greeter and the fonts are normal and readable. Howeverm the font problem remains when I change back to the graphical greeter. I have tried each of the graphical greeter themes (Bluecurve, circles, Happy Gnome) but nothing seems to matter. I also tried to find where the font size is specified in gdm.conf but found nothing. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): gdm-2.4.4.5-1 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Bring system up to runlevel 5. 2. Set gdm local greeter to graphical greeter. Actual Results: Fonts on graphical login screen are still too tiny. Expected Results: Fonts should be large enough to read. Additional info: X display running in 16-bit mode at 1024x768 resolution. I have also used redhat-config-xfree86 when logged into the X console as root to change the resolution and bit depth to no avail. When I run redhat- config-xfree86 from a text window then I am unable to use it because the fonts are too small.
I have this problem as well. I had the problem with FC1 and I am seeing it again with FC2. In the past the problem disappeared on two occasions. I usually have an ATI Radeon 9000 graphics card installed. The problem disappeared when I installed an nVidia graphics card, and then switched back to the ATI card. It also disappeared when I installed the ATI drivers, and was still gone when I switched back to the standard driver. Whenever I do a fresh install of Fedora the problem comes back.
Hmm, I've having a hard time understanding how the video card driver could affect what fonts are used. Especially if it only affects the graphical greeter. Anything of interest in /var/log/messages or the Xserver log? Any other font problems you've noticed with this card/driver combination?
Created attachment 101459 [details] "Screen" sections from xorg.conf that does not produce error.
Created attachment 101460 [details] Xorg log with tiny fonts.
Created attachment 101461 [details] Xorg log with normal fonts
I haven't noticed any other problems with this card/driver combination. After installing fc2 I did start to get the following error showing up in /var/log/messages (kernel: vesafb: probe of vesafb0 failed with error -6) but I haven't noticed any ill effects. Recently I set up a second monitor, and while I was messing around with Xorg.conf I accidentally fixed the problem. In the "Screen" sections if I switched around Screen identifiers the problem went away. Switching the Screen identifiers reliably produces or eliminates the tiny fonts on the greeter (see the attachment above). If you grep the two log files above for "Display" you get this from the good one: (II) RADEON(0): Primary Display == Type 1 (--) RADEON(0): Display dimensions: (340, 270) mm (II) RADEON(1): Secondary Display == Type 1 (**) RADEON(1): Display dimensions: (2550, 2550) mm (WW) RADEON(1): Probed monitor is 340x270 mm, using Displaysize 2550x2550 mm And this from the bad one: (**) RADEON(0): Display dimensions: (2550, 2550) mm (WW) RADEON(0): Probed monitor is 340x270 mm, using Displaysize 2550x2550 mm (II) RADEON(1): Secondary Display == Type 1 (--) RADEON(1): Display dimensions: (340, 270) mm
We ran into this issue as well. We were able to resolve this issue by updating the following BIOS settings for our Dell Dimension 4600 machines. Can someone try and explain why these modifications correct the problem. BIOS (for Dell desktops) * Enter the BIOS by pressing the F2 key when the Dell screen appear during boot. * Go to "Memory Information" and change AGP Aperture from 128 MB to 64 MB * Go to "Integrated Devices" and change Onboard Video Buffer from 1 M to 8 M
We fixed a dpi issue in the gdmgreeter in rawhide recently, which was probably causing this symptom.