text font too small to see on AppBrowser and Aterm

[rbacher]

[removed 6]

Yes, indeed. I have several posts there. Mavrothal was great helping me to solve other issues with installing a minimalistic microcore onto an olpc XO computer. I previously installed the Tinycore versions he has there, but I wanted (and I now have) an even more minimalistic OS. Quite possibly Tinycore has some way to make the fonts bigger, however I am running Quozl's microcore for the XO. Boot time from a cold boot is 24 sec (on a dinky powered XO)!  I will try the other ideas you wrote. There has to be a way to do this. I have succeeded in making all of the other fonts larger and perfectly readable. It's just the "system" fonts (cpanel, appbrowser, etc) that remain microscopically small

[maro]

So it appears that some "special" boot loader has some influence on the outcome, I just wonder what the result of cat /proc/cmdline might be.

[rbacher]

So it appears that some "special" boot loader has some influence on the outcome, I just wonder what the result of cat /proc/cmdline might be.

no_console_suspend selinux=0 fbcon=font:SUN12x22 quiet norestore tz=EST+5 home=LABEL=sd tce=LABEL=sd opt=LABEL=sd

Does this help any in figuring out how to make the system fonts bigger or the resolution smaller?

[rbacher]

I tried:

sudo xfbdev -screen 800x600x24 && export DISPLAY=:0.0 || echo Failed
startx

The result was the same as when I do $ Xfbdev.
What I get is a gray and black cross hatching with an X instead of a mouse arrow. When I go back to the CLI by pressing alt-cntrl-del, I see the following line:

$ Could not init font path element /usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi, removing from list!

Under /usr/lib/X11/fonts/ I have 75dpi and misc but not 100dpi.

[maro]

no_console_suspend selinux=0 fbcon=font:SUN12x22 quiet norestore tz=EST+5 home=LABEL=sd tce=LABEL=sd opt=LABEL=sd

Does this help any in figuring out how to make the system fonts bigger or the resolution smaller?

Maybe not directly, I just wanted to be sure what boot codes are getting passed to the kernel. I assume all the ones after 'quiet' are your own. But where is the 'vga=...', and are the first three also specified by yourself? This must be a rather "special" setup ...

[tinypoodle]

FWIW, you can find the boot options for fbcon here:

http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/fb/fbcon.txt

[tinypoodle]

Maybe not directly, I just wanted to be sure what boot codes are getting passed to the kernel. I assume all the ones after 'quiet' are your own. But where is the 'vga=...', and are the first three also specified by yourself? This must be a rather "special" setup ...

What puzzles me most is the 'selinux=0' part...  

[tinypoodle]

Under /usr/lib/X11/fonts/ I have 75dpi and misc but not 100dpi.

FWIW, same here   

[rbacher]

Maybe not directly, I just wanted to be sure what boot codes are getting passed to the kernel. I assume all the ones after 'quiet' are your own. But where is the 'vga=...', and are the first three also specified by yourself? This must be a rather "special" setup ...

Yes, it's a special set up. Not sure what I am allowed to write about it. Some previous text I wrote was deleted per Rule 6 (which I then looked up, it says "6. No specific remasters/remixes releases or discussion"). Not sure why that's a rule but I am not here to make any trouble, only to look for help.

I have an olpc XO computer. It comes with a child like OS named Sugar. You can't just replace it with another OS like you can on a "normal" computer, there's something different in the hardware. There are a few OS's out there specially written for the XO by people who know how to do it. A popular one is Ubuntu adapted for the XO. I ran that for awhile however I wanted a smaller OS. That's because the XO computer is very low powered, small ram, slow processing speed, etc. So my novice wanderings led me to Tinycore, and then to Microcore. Microcore is a perfect fit for the XO computer. But you can't just put microcore "as is" onto an XO computer. It has to be modified in ways beyond my ability. Fortunately there is such a modified version out there written by someone named Quozl. I installed it and it runs perfectly. My only problem is the tiny system fonts.

The boot codes after "quiet" are required by the XO computer. There is currently no "vga=" because it does nothing. Originally it came as "vga=788".  At the suggestion of a message I received (I think in this thread) I changed it to "vga=785" and I tried some other numbers. This idea was based on the fact that I run Xfbdev and, it was explained to me, the frame buffer is made bigger or smaller by the "vga=" setting. But that's not what happens on an XO with the OS that I have. The "vga=" does nothing. It's just not there now because I made 5 or 6 changes to it, to see what would happen, and the last change was simply to take it out altogether.

Finally, sorry for the long post, and thanks to those who have tried (are trying) to help me. This may be an unsolvable condition due to installing a modified microcore onto a computer that has unusual hardware.

[tinypoodle]

If vga=ask doesn't bring up any prompt with a choice, it is unlikely that setting any other value would do anything.

it does not make much sense to speculate about a kernel which is obviously very different from the TC stock kernel without seeing its config, but as you seem to use a fbcon kernel parameter, perhaps you might do trial and error with other fbcon parameters, as per the manual.

[rbacher]

I tried vga=ask along with several other combinations (vga=785, vga=text-mode, and others) just trying by hit and miss to get the screen to show up different in some respect. The vga=ask did not bring up a prompt, and no combination did anything different. I can only conclude that "vga=" does nothing in my set up

I agree that it makes no sense to speculate about this. I don't want to waste anyone's time. In other situations I have gotten excellent answers on forums like this one. It's hard for me to know when I will get an answer that works and when I won't. I grew up with Windows and only recently tried to do things with Linux. It can be incredibly frustrating, I feel like I am stumbling around in the dark much of the time.

I will try some different combinations with the fbcon parameter tonight. As always, thanks for trying to help me.

[CleverClogs]

A very old thread ... but I will add this as it is regarding the original topic on page 1.
I will start a new thread if asked to.
This uses a simple trick (see important note below) nothing special.
It might help someone with ageing eyesight see all the apps in the list

This zooms in everything (rather than just changing the font which sometimes spoils gui layouts)

Use xrandr to determine a safe LOW resolution for your monitor (with correct aspect ratio}

xrandr > xrandr.txt
I chose 720x400 to display the app browser, whereas normally I use 1280x720

For an openbox menu or pipe menu use this one-liner and a small script (see below)

Code: [Select]

<item label="" icon="/usr/local/share/pixmaps/Tango-24px/package-x-generic.png"><action name="Execute"><command>sh -c "/home/tc/.config/openbox/size.sh &amp; apps &amp;&amp; /home/tc/.X.d/autostart.sh"</command></action></item>The app browser opens straight away when clicked in the menu.
After a delay of one second the app browser now fills the screen with panning for extra room.
Install apps or whatever.
Close app browser and the original size is restored by autostart.sh.

Important note:
& x1 allows the next menu item to fire immediately
& & x2 waits until the previous menu item finishes before firing the next menu item

Zoomed in
/home/tc/.config/openbox/size.sh

Code: [Select]

#! /bin/bash
sleep 1
xrandr --fb 1280x1440
xrandr --output VGA-0 --mode 720x400 --panning 1280x1440 --scale 1.0x1.0
Zoomed out
/home/tc/.X.d/autostart.sh

Code: [Select]

# just the part for xrandr
sleep 1
xrandr --fb 1280x1440
xrandr --output VGA-0 --mode 1280x720 --panning 1280x1440 --scale 1.0x1.0
    [Edit]: Added code tags.  Rich

[Rich]

Hi CleverClogs
Please use  Code Tags  when posting commands and responses seen in a terminal. To use  Code Tags  click on the  #  icon
above the reply box and paste your text between the  Code Tags  as shown in this example:

[code][   36.176529] pcm512x 1-004d: Failed to get supply 'AVDD': -517
[   36.176536] pcm512x 1-004d: Failed to get supplies: -517
[   36.191753] pcm512x 1-004d: Failed to get supply 'AVDD': -517[/code]

It will appear like this in your post:

Code: [Select]

[   36.176529] pcm512x 1-004d: Failed to get supply 'AVDD': -517
[   36.176536] pcm512x 1-004d: Failed to get supplies: -517
[   36.191753] pcm512x 1-004d: Failed to get supply 'AVDD': -517
Code Tags  serve as visual markers between what you are trying to say and the information you are posting. They also preserve
spacing so column aligned data displays properly. Code tags also automatically add horizontal and or vertical scrollbars
to accommodate long lines and listings.

[CleverClogs]

Thanks Rich for the note regarding code tags.
I did my post today very quickly using <code> </code> and did not look at any of the buttons or emoticons.
Having not posted code anywhere for about a decade I relied on my memory.
I already know all the newbie descriptives about code tags what they are etc.
I just did a typo.
So of course it will be \[code\] not <code> in future.
Anyway great distro I have been using tinycore a long time (>7 years) and before that I used other minimal fast distros. Linux since about 2006.

[Rich]

Hi CleverClogs
I did notice your attempt at code tags. I just thought I'd give
you a friendly nudge in the right direction with one of my
standard posts on the topic.

Welcome to the forum.