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FreeBSD Hardware

1024×768 FreeBSD VT Console

I use of a lot of old kit in my lab. Some of these machines have very poor ACPI implementations and they often complete their boot displaying an 80×25 character console on monitors that can support much higher resolutions. I have put up with staggered ZFS listings for too long and decided to fix this problem on my FreeBSD hosts.

Modern FreeBSD uses the VT console by default. If a video graphics driver has been installed, it will display a console in a higher resolution if configured.

The configuration below was tested on FreeBSD 13.4-RELEASE-p1 and FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE-p5 with onboard intel graphics adapter.

Install the graphics driver:

$ sudo pkg install drm-kmod

Run the following command to load the intel graphics driver on boot:

$ sysrc kld_list+=i915kms

Edit /boot/loader.conf adding the following lines to the file:

# VT console
hw.vga.textmode=1
hw.vga.acpi_ignore_no_vga=1
kern.vty=vt
kern.vt.fb.default_mode="1024x768"

If dmesg reports a good ACPI table, you don’t need to use hw.vga.acpi_ignore_no_vga=1 .

If you are using a screen that cannot display 1024×768, use kern.vt.fb.default_mode=”800×600″ instead.

Reboot the host to see the new console settings are active.

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