(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I'm seeking for a solution of configuring font and size of puppy CLI font when the system comes up.

I do use puppy to configure or install other distros as well as work in non-X environments with puppy on systems with low mem and/or low cpu power and when usage of is more effective for my need of a browser than an X-environment for Mozilla-Firefox.

I'm searching for a solution prior to start of X with xwin. All solutions I found while searching the forums and using google were not helpful in any way, always using rxvt in a started X environment and of no use to solve my problem.

The reason why I need to change the font is easy. I may want to choose a font I use on my gentoo system like default8x9 instead of default8x16.

And I may want to use a different layout for VGA=ask when booting, I often use 80x60 (80 chars on 60 lines) instead of the standard 80x25 (80 chars on 25 lines), results in more lines of text displayed on my laptop window.

Sometimes I use to display contents of files of unknown length for a quick view and for known lengths of files.

Sometimes this results in a destroyed font or keymap in the current CLI, please view the attached pic to see what I mean.

I need a solution to reset the font/keymap in the appropriate CLI terminal other than rebooting the system.

Even though I have configured my puppy to use more terminals when starting the system, losing one or two terminals is quite annoying.

When being in the middle of configuring a new system a restart of puppy is not the solution I have in mind. And killing the terminal doesn't help either, I already tried that .

Can anybody help me find a solution or have one handy?

A bump in the right correction may also be of help.

Monson wrote:I'm seeking for a solution of configuring font and size of puppy CLI font when the system comes up.

Console fonts on the Puppies I've seen live in the /lib/consolefonts/ directory, and may be set with the setfont command (in the text console, of course, not a terminal window like rxvt). For instance: Support for the text console is not one of Puppy's strengths. The Puppy Racy 5.2.2 that I'm using at the moment has only lat1-12.psfu.gz and lat2-12.psfu.gz, but some newer Puppies also have LatArCyrHeb-16.psfu.gz and LatGrkCyr-8x16.psfu.gz. You may want to copy the ones you want to use from your other distros, or seek them out on the Internet.

Monson wrote:Sometimes I use

Code: Select all

less ...

to display contents of files of unknown length for a quick view and

Code: Select all

cat ...

for known lengths of files.

Sometimes this results in a destroyed font or keymap in the current CLI . . .

The console has probably interpreted some bytes of a binary file as an escape sequence to change your character set or mapping. You can often get back to normal with this command:

OK now, I did have luck to find a workaround on the restoring of the scrambled terminal font.

I was trying to find out what hardware my new system uses and as I always configured sound on my installed puppy distros I called on the command line.

Alsamixer showed the correct font and after exiting, the regular font was restored, the scrambled one vanished.

Maybe that helps to solve the problem? I do hope so.

I forgot to post my current system:
Pentium I with 64mb and 8gb Flashdisk on a SDHC-Chip, Puppy 4.21 installed in a subdir /puppy421 on an ext3-partition.
Partition boot written to mbr with lilo 22.8. which I found compatible with Puppy 4.21, as I'm no fan of grub. I compiled it separately on my gentoo system and copied the binary to Puppy.


@npierce:
Thanks for your bump, I found the possible fonts you mentioned for puppy in Listed were:
lat1-12.psfu
lat2-12.psfu

I'll next try to find my gentoo fonts and see if I can use them in puppy.

I'll report the results here.

'reset' is the answer -just type that in -even though you can't see the proper output on the screen as you type.
To avoid this happening, always use less instead of cat when working in the CLI. cat-ing binary files will always mess the screen, while less will warn you.

Monson wrote:...I need a solution to reset the font/keymap in the appropriate CLI terminal other than rebooting the system....
A bump in the right correction may also be of help.

With recent puppies console font is set in initrd.gz:

initrd.gz wrote: #120216 L18L suggests load these, instead of what is below...
case $PLANG in
en*) echo ;;
ar*|iw*) #L18L no Greek
setfont /lib/consolefonts/LatArCyrHeb-16.psfu.gz -C /dev/tty1
FONTMAP='LatArCyrHeb-16.psfu'
;;
*) #L18L All European languages; new default ?!
zcat /lib/consolefonts/LatGrkCyr-8x16.psfu.gz | loadfont
FONTMAP='LatGrkCyr-8x16.psfu'
;;
esac

Thus I think you should try
- zcat .....
and / or
- setfont ........ -C /dev/ttyx