How to change the resolution after booting Arch Linux installation medium?

Question

Is it possible to change the screen resolution after fully booting the Arch Linux installation medium? I tried to add vga=795 to the boot line, and that worked for a few lines before the resolution was changed back to an unreadable 4K. And the various suggestions in the wiki seem to assume that I have already set up networking and can install packages.

With the help of a guide to the default console fonts I was able to set the largest available using setfont /usr/share/consolefonts/iso01-12x22.psfu.gz, but that is still barely readable.

score 18 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 01 '16 at 21:43

18

In addition to changing the font size to a larger one, with setfont, you can also pass kernel parameters on the boot loader line. The ISO uses Syslinux, so you can hit Tab when the menu appears and append these parameters to the kernel line. Two that would be most useful are:

nomodeset to disable KMS
video=1024x768 to force a specific resolution if KMS is required.

answered Nov 01 '16 at 21:43

jasonwryan

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Great answer. But with systemd-boot, I think `e` is the key to press not Tab. – Björn Lindqvist Nov 03 '17 at 16:03
@BjörnLindqvist Correct: you can just edit that sort of thing into the answer. – jasonwryan Nov 03 '17 at 17:39
video=1024x768 (or in my case 1920x1080, 1/4 actual resolution) worked great. – Fopedush Mar 07 '18 at 22:49

l0b0 · Answer 2 · 2016-11-01T21:13:28.133

8

How to install and use a reasonable font:

Set up networking using a handy microscope
pacman --sync --refresh terminus-font
setfont /usr/share/consolefonts/ter-132n.psf.gz (UEFI mode) or setfont /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts/ter-132n.psf.gz (CSM mode)

edited Nov 01 '16 at 21:13

answered Nov 01 '16 at 20:15

l0b0

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I found that fon't didn't exist on the version of Arch I downloaded today. latarcyrheb-sun32.psfu.gz worked just as well. – kagronick Sep 23 '17 at 19:30
It looks like the fonts directory has moved to /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts/. – Fopedush Mar 09 '18 at 19:15
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@Fopedush No, all the .psf.gz files are still in `/usr/share/kbd/consolefonts` – l0b0 Mar 09 '18 at 19:54

How to change the resolution after booting Arch Linux installation medium?

2 Answers2