Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 82130
Install & console resolultion only 640x480 on an LCD display
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:50:07 EDT
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 Galeon/1.2.7 (X11; Linux i686; U;) Gecko/20021216 Description of problem: I'm using a laptop with an LCD display. While Phoebe is being installed, the resolution is 640x480, using only a fraction of the small (12") display. I consider it a bug because friends who watch my install over my shoulder think it is ugly. :) More seriously, though, some of the installation text can be difficult to read. I understand the challenge in fixing this. The resolution of the laptop's screen must be determined, and then the appropriate framebuffer (VESA?) started with the correct resolution. This is a more general problem, too. On a laptop the console's resolution defaults to 640x480, even in everyday usage. The option vga=0x305 must be fed to the kernel during boot to set the appropriate resolution. I think that the "vga" boot option should be automatically set in grub.conf by anaconda, so that the average laptop user never has to learn about this little detail. (I didn't find another bug report on this, but excuse me if someone else has already added this to bugzilla!) Thanks! Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Insert RH Linux CD and boot Actual Results: A small 640x480 installation screen, surrounded a big black border. Expected Results: An installation screen which occupies the entire screen. Additional info:
You can boot with 'linux resolution=1600x1200' (or whatever is appropriate.)
What is this laptop? What video chipset does it use?
Oops, I didn't notice the email about Mike's email until now. It's a Sony VAIO R505GC, using an i830MG graphics chipset. (Actually, lspci reports it as an "Intel Corp. 82830 CGC," while XFree86 reports it as an i830M. (The display is gorgeous under X. I mentioned in a comment under Bug 80402, though, that the LCD display panel wasn't autodetected, and I still don't know the details about it. But, I do know that it works fine as a "Generic Laptop 1024x768 Display," though.) I feel silly for omitting the details about the machine in the report. :) Let me know if you need anything else.
Unfortunately there is no way from Linux to probe the LCD features like we can CRT monitors. We hope this will be possible at some point in the future. You can add options to the grub boot command line in the bootloader configuration screen (it might be under the advanced options).
Fair enough. Now, how do I change the resolution of grub itself? I've searched pretty extensively, and can't figure out how to make it 1024x768, so it doesn't look silly every boot.