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When the Pi boots up, I find the initial number of rows and columns it outputs too high - all the characters are a bit small and hard to read, especially things like '0' and 'O', 'l' and '1', etc. Is there a way to reduce the number of columns and rows that the initial tty uses, i.e. make the text bigger.

tlhIngan
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Skizz
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1 Answers1

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In /boot/config.txt you can add

framebuffer_width=1280
framebuffer_height=720

or try adding

hdmi_mode=16

You can also use

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

to set the font to VGA 16x32, but that doesn't take effect until partway through the boot process

It may be possible to pass a font to the kernel by adding

fbcon=font:<name>

to /boot/cmdline.txt but I haven't found a value for <name> that works yet (VGA8x8 is much worse, VGA8x16 is the default). Maybe the kernel can be rebuilt to include VGA16x32

John La Rooy
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    What's the default value for hdmi_mode? I haven't got my pi to hand so I can't easily check. I was hoping not to drop the resolution - it's a 1080 display. Would specifying a lower resolution also affect the X display? – Skizz Sep 06 '12 at 10:44
  • Tried a few things out on the PI last night, and the image quality was greatly improved by switching off the TV's auto-scaling mode. Doh! Still, the font is small, it's 50 lines-ish, which means being closer to TV to read the text. Would still like a bigger font (25 lines?) without decreasing the output resolution. The dpkq-reconfigure doesn't appear to be installed on my PI (wheezy). – Skizz Sep 07 '12 at 08:50
  • @Skizz dpkg-reconfigure (note: d-pkg as in "package", not q) is a fairly critical piece of Debian and must be on the system. It may be in /usr/sbin which may not be in plain users' path. But you need root for it and sudo should look on sbin dirs. – XTL Sep 10 '12 at 05:41
  • @XTL: I was typing dpkg-configure - the 'q' was just a typo here. Trying dpkg-reconfigure now. – Skizz Sep 11 '12 at 18:12
  • @Skizz, dpkg is a debian thing. If you're not using a debian derived distro, you will have to find out the equivalent command for that distro – John La Rooy Sep 11 '12 at 19:57
  • @gnibbler: The dpkg thing is sorted. Was typing configure instead of reconfigure! TTY set up nicely now with bigger font. – Skizz Sep 11 '12 at 22:08