Yeban's Weblog: Debian Console, Framebuffer, Grub2

Yeban's Weblog: Debian Console, Framebuffer, Grub2: "Debian Console, Framebuffer, Grub2
After a fresh install of Debian the boot up screen looks really ugly. Here are few things you can do to beautify it up. These apply if you use Grub2.

First step is to enable framebuffer. Passing the 'vga=' option to the kernel has been deprecated. To enable framebuffer, open the file /etc/default/grub and change the value of GRUB_GFXMODE variable to the resolution you want. For example:

GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x800

Now open the file /etc/grub.d/00_header and find the lines:

if loadfont `make_system_path_relative_to_its_root ${GRUB_FONT_PATH}` ; then
set gfxmode=${GRUB_GFXMODE}
insmod gfxterm

Between the second and the third line (of the above snippet) add:

set gfxpayload=keep

so that it finallly looks like this

if loadfont `make_system_path_relative_to_its_root ${GRUB_FONT_PATH}` ; then
set gfxmode=${GRUB_GFXMODE}
set gfxpayload=keep
insmod gfxterm

Now run, update-grub as root. Do remember to change the default wallpaper with another of the resolution you specified above.

Coming to the fonts part. You need to install the console-setup package in order to be able to customize the console. If you already have it installed run dpkg-reconfigure console-setup as root. You will be presented with terminal based dialogs to chose from various configuration options for the console. On the third screen is the option to choose the font. For me the option 'Do not change the boot/kernel font' works(read, looks) the best. Choose the options that is best for you."