antiX-17-b1-full available for public testing - Page 4

BitJam · posted: 2017-07-03 17:05

eugen-b wrote:* The name cli-aptiX is so"crazy" that I memorized it wrong with apt-antiX.

Suggestions? I like what you remembered:"apt-antiX". It may cause less confusion even though it doesn't directly imply the program uses the command line.

As for using Synaptic as a model, part of that grew organically. We still offer the option to directly install packages without marking them first. Marking was added because it is much faster to mark N packages and then install them all at once rather than install N times. If installing N times was nearly as fast then marking wouldn't have been added.

* mpsyt is two times in antiX-cli-cc

Will fix.

* fbgs gives this ...
* fbi gives ...

Will fix by disabling these entries when run in X-windows. The fb* commands usually only run correctly inside a framebuffer (virtual console).

* console-font-select and console-width-select seem not to apply the changes.

The changes can only be applied in a framebuffer. These should also be disabled in X-windows.

* all the rest in antix-cli-cc seems to work. Great job!!

Thanks! If you have the time and inclination, please switch to framebuffer (Ctrl-Alt-F2, for example) and see if things work any better.

The primary purpose of antiX-cli-cc is to run in the virtual console, for people who are using the core system, for people who prefer working there, and for people who have run into a problem starting X. But it should still work smoothly in X so I thank you for the feedback.

skidoo · posted: 2017-07-03 20:02

framebuffer (Ctrl-Alt-F2, for example)

From the bootmenu, I chose 1280x1024.
During live init, immediately after"setting timezone", the font changes ~~ becomes 8mm tall characters (23" 1920x1080 display).
Same (extremely large font size) is present in Ctrl+Alt+nn console.
Is result this"by design", like, toward accommodating HiDPI dislays?

anticapitalista · posted: 2017-07-03 20:14

skidoo wrote:
framebuffer (Ctrl-Alt-F2, for example)
From the bootmenu, I chose 1280x1024.
During live init, immediately after"setting timezone", the font changes ~~ becomes 8mm tall characters (23" 1920x1080 display).
Same (extremely large font size) is present in Ctrl+Alt+nn console.
Is result this"by design", like, toward accommodating HiDPI dislays?

Yes.
You should be able to set the console font in F4 menu and try making the change in antiX-cli-cc while in the framebuffer. This is one of the things we would like to see tested.

BitJam · posted: 2017-07-03 21:09

skidoo wrote:From the bootmenu, I chose 1280x1024.
During live init, immediately after "setting timezone" the font changes ~~ becomes 8mm tall characters (23" 1920x1080 display).
Same (extremely large font size) is present in Ctrl+Alt+nn console.
Is result this"by design", like, toward accommodating HiDPI dislays?

Do you mean right after it says"Setting timezone and local time to xxx" in cyan text? The font is not supposed to change then. This sounds like a bug, almost as if an older version of live-L10n was being used. You might also see this if the screen resolution changes without the font changing but that would be a bug too if I'm right about when it happens.

The console font is supposed to get set very early in the boot process, before you can see it. Then it gets set again when udev runs. Udev seems to set the font as tiny as possible and then we set it back to a reasonable value.

Since the console screen resolution can change drastically during booting we try to keep picking a font to keep the number of columns of chars on the console roughly constant. The default target value is 120 chars wide. This is what you should see very early in the boot process and also after udev is done running. As anticap said, you can adjust this in the F4 menu with the conwidth option. You can also set this after you've booted with the console-width-select program. You can get information about the first time we set the font in the /var/log/live/initrd.log file. That program and that file are both accessible via the new antiX-cli-cc program which can be handy.

If the font is changing at some time other than at the start of the boot process before you see it or when udev runs then I'd like to know how to reproduce the behavior.

You might be able to see if the resolution is changing by using the cheat"bp=b8,b9". This will open a bash shell before and after the live-L10n script runs (along with a few others). You can get the size of the screen in chars with"stty size". You might even be able to take screen shoots with fbgrab but no guarantees it will work.

Hierax_ca · posted: 2017-07-04 03:18

Thank You especially for the addition of the antiX-cli-cc that's just the sort of thing I was asking for earlier to showcase and learn terminal use. It really takes me back to the old DOS days and stretches out the useful life of much older computers -- great work!

dolphin_oracle · posted: 2017-07-04 19:17

ok, antiX-cli-cc and cli-aptiX are pretty cool. very nice for building stuff up from core, or for setting up a stuff in an X-less environment.

Quick question for nvidia users.... right now ddm-mx does not create an xorg.conf file for nvidia users OOTB. The driver works fine without it, but apparently the nvidia-settings tool requires an existing xorg.conf file. Or at least that's what I'm hearing from a few users at mxforums and on youtube.

So what do you guys think? Should ddm-mx create an xorg.conf file?

skidoo · posted: 2017-07-04 22:25

Do you mean right after it says"Setting timezone and local time to xxx" in cyan text?
The font is not supposed to change then.

Observed again/still in this build, but not new behavior:

the output contains block of red-on-blue and/or yellow-on-blue ansi
beginning at that timezone line
or
sometimes the first affected line reads"restore machine state" (or ...restore state file)
sometimes the first affected line reads"restore general state"
or
sometimes the first affected line reads"init version 2.88 booting"

(Same as ever) the"color-on blue" reverts to black background after 12--15 lines, but...

new to this build, beginning with the start of that block, I'm getting the huge font.
Is that the point where KMS kicks in?
Held a ruler to screen and measured 6mm tall uppercase. (Sorry, previous 8mm claim was an estimate)
After testing many permutations
F4 conwidth=
F7 default, vs 1280*1024, vs ...

The only change I've been able to achieve (regarding the rendered console font size later in the session)
is"less-crisp, 4.5mm tall uppercase".

If not a bug, it's counterintuitive.
I expected @conwidth=160 would yield a smaller fontsize than @conwidth=140
No, that (=140) is what gave the 4.5mm tall result. Selecting either (=110) or (=160) yields 6mm tall font.

=============

prior my earlier post mentioning this, I had already tried with, and without, quiet splash= bootline args
and learned those only affected fontsize during early init (early, meaning earlier than the start of the"color-on-blue" output)

I'll"go with the flow" ~~ the 6mm tall text is beautifully crisp.
The only noticeable implication so far is that I need to right-arrow scroll to see full launchstrings within htop output.
My motivation for posting was to find out whether others were seeing same, vs new version
of nouveau or X.Org or KMS or whatever is quirky with NVIDIA GT215 [GeForce GT 240]

* console-font-select and console-width-select

These work fine.
Now, I need to figure out where to set a persistent default.

BitJam · posted: 2017-07-05 00:31

skidoo wrote:the output contains block of red-on-blue and/or yellow-on-blue ansi
beginning at that timezone line

As you mention, this is a bug when the modesetting driver taking over control of the consoles. Maybe it is associated with the fbcondecor kernel patch. It is very annoying and I don't know how to prevent it. I supposed I could clear the screen before launching init to limit the damage. The problem always goes away when you use"nomodeset".

new to this build, beginning with the start of that block, I'm getting the huge font.
Is that the point where KMS kicks in?

Your report has been very confusing to me because"when" and"where" were switched.

I try to track down problems based on *when* they occur. If I know when a problem happens then I can track down what code is running at that time. I think you were reporting where on the screen the problem happened but when the font gets changed it changes the font on the entire screen. There used to be code that changed the font right after the code the sets the timezone. This is partly why I got confused.

Held a ruler to screen and measured 6mm tall uppercase. (Sorry, previous 8mm claim was an estimate)
After testing many permutations
F4 conwidth=
F7 default, vs 1280*1024, vs ...

Instead of going through these machinations it would be much simpler on my end if you used fbgrab to take a screen shot and then attach it or email it to me directly. I have another suggestion below.

If not a bug, it's counterintuitive.
I expected @conwidth=160 would yield a smaller fontsize than @conwidth=140
No, that (=140) is what gave the 4.5mm tall result. Selecting either (=110) or (=160) yields 6mm tall font.

This sounds like a bug that I can't reproduce here. Here the fonts always get smaller when conwidth gets larger.

* console-font-select and console-width-select
These work fine.

If console-width-select is working fine then the font size should be getting smaller as the conwidth gets larger. That's what happens here and it is what happens when I use the"conwidth=xxx" cheat.

When you first run console-width-select it will tell you the current console width in the 3rd line at the top. When I do that with the default conwidth=120 and a 1920x1080 screen then it tells me the true console width is 133 characters wide. If this is what you get then we are in sync and so far the problem is just"hey, the fonts are bigger".

We still have to look at your problem with setting conwidth from the F4 menu. It works fine here. If I set the conwidth to a larger value then I get smaller fonts, as expected. The console-width-select tool might be useful for figuring out what is going on with your system. As I said, when it starts it tells you the current width in characters. You can also get this information from the command"stty size".

You can also try turning off our font setting with the cheat"conwidth=off" from the F4 menu.

The reason for all of this was, as you suspected, to make the console usable OOTB even on systems with very high DPI. We then let you fine-tune the size with the conwidth=xxx boot parameter. You can even add a comma to set the size before and after udev runs. For example"conwidth=200,80" will start out with a tiny font and then switch to very large font when udev runs.

Perhaps the easiest way to track down if there is a problem is for you to report the output of"stty size" when using the default"conwidth=120" and then again after using a very large conwidth such as"conwidth=200". The contents of the file /etc/live/config/font would also be very useful. For a 1920x1080 screen with the default conwidth I get:

Code: Select all

      8.55:  120  1875:       udev-rule-92: Uni2-TerminusBold28x14
      8.80:  120  1875:       udev-rule-92: Uni2-TerminusBold28x14
      8.85:  120  1875:  keyboard-setup.sh: Uni2-TerminusBold28x14

The first number is the seconds since the kernel booted. The second number is the conwidth=xxx parameter. The third is the available width in pixels (which can be reduced by fbcondecor). Then we have the name of the program that is setting the console width and the name of the font it selected.

skidoo · posted: 2017-07-05 04:30

Code: Select all

=======================
disable=lx
F4 default (120)
F7 1280*1024
     12.53:  120  1280:       udev-rule-92: Uni2-TerminusBold20x10
     14.60:  120  1875:       udev-rule-92: Uni2-TerminusBold28x14
     15.03:  120  1875:  keyboard-setup.sh: Uni2-TerminusBold28x14
console-font-select reports: current width is 133 characters

=======================
disable=lx
F4 conwidth=140
F7 1280*1024
     18.57:  140  1920:       udev-rule-92: Uni2-TerminusBold24x12
     19.52:  140  1920:  keyboard-setup.sh: Uni2-TerminusBold24x12
console-font-select reports: current width is 160 characters

=======================
disable=lx   nomodeset
F4 conwidth=140
F7 1280*1024
     13.09:  140  1280:       udev-rule-92: Uni2-TerminusBold16
     15.67:  140  1280:  keyboard-setup.sh: Uni2-TerminusBold16
console-font-select reports: current width is 160 characters

=======================
disable=lx
F4 conwidth=110
F7 1280*1024
     13.32:  110  1280:       udev-rule-92: Uni2-TerminusBold22x11
     15.22:  110  1920:       udev-rule-92: Uni2-TerminusBold32x16
     16.10:  110  1920:  keyboard-setup.sh: Uni2-TerminusBold32x16
console-font-select reports: current width is 120 characters

=======================
disable=lx
F4 conwidth=100
F7 1280*1024
     13.44:  100  1280:       udev-rule-92: Uni2-TerminusBold24x12
     15.24:  100  1920:       udev-rule-92: Uni2-TerminusBold32x16
     15.90:  100  1920:  keyboard-setup.sh: Uni2-TerminusBold32x16
console-font-select reports: current width is 120 characters.
DUDE. PRIOR TO LAUNCHING THE CONSOLE-FONT-SELECT UTILITY
THE CONSOLE FONT IS STILL BEING DISPLAYED 6MM TALL.

=======================
disable=lx
F4 conwidth=80
F7 1280*1024
     13.47:   80  1280:       udev-rule-92: Uni2-TerminusBold32x16
     15.47:   80  1920:       udev-rule-92: Uni2-TerminusBold32x16
     16.10:   80  1920:  keyboard-setup.sh: Uni2-TerminusBold32x16
console-font-select reports: current width is 120 characters
stty size -> 33 120

=======================
disable=lx
F4 conwidth=off
   "font" file is absent in /etc/live/config/
console-font-select reports: current width is 120 characters
stty size -> 33 120

=======================
quiet splash=v disable=lx
F4 conwidth=off
   "font" file is absent in /etc/live/config/
console-font-select reports: current width is 117 characters
stty size -> 30 117

=======================
quiet splash=v disable=lx
F4 conwidth=80
     13.48:   80  1280:       udev-rule-92: Uni2-TerminusBold32x16
     15.73:   80  1875:       udev-rule-92: Uni2-TerminusBold32x16
     16.10:   80  1875:  keyboard-setup.sh: Uni2-TerminusBold32x16
console-font-select reports: current width is 117 characters.
stty size -> 30 117

skidoo · posted: 2017-07-05 05:47

pathetic, but true:
Latenight, while checking out the liveboot F1 menu recently, I read the line in MainMenu"F7 Set Console Resolution".
I pressed the F7 key. Nothing happened."Oh, that section hasn't been written yet."
Scrolled to the line mentioning F6, pressed Enter and... Duh! {facepalm}
Backtracked, selected the F7 SetBlahblah line, and pressed Enter.

skidoo · posted: 2017-07-05 05:59

content of /etc/default/console-setup

Code: Select all

# CONFIGURATION FILE FOR SETUPCON

# Consult the console-setup(5) manual page.

ACTIVE_CONSOLES="/dev/tty[1-6]"

CHARMAP="UTF-8"

CODESET="guess"
FONTFACE="TerminusBold"
FONTSIZE="32x16"

VIDEOMODE=

# The following is an example how to use a braille font
# FONT='lat9w-08.psf.gz brl-8x8.psf'

$ date
Wed Jul 5 05:58:35 UTC 2017
$ stat /etc/default/console-setup
File: /etc/default/console-setup
. . .
Access: 2017-07-05 04:10:54.086666578 +0000
Modify: 2017-07-05 04:10:52.466666647 +0000
Change: 2017-07-05 04:10:52.466666647 +0000

$ stat /var/log/live/initrd.log
File: /var/log/live/initrd.log
. . .
Modify: 2017-07-05 04:10:49.057511582 +0000

$ head -23 /var/log/live/initrd.log

Code: Select all

Run custom code before reading boot codes: /live/custom/antiX/0.sh
Width of screen in pixels 1235
Try to set line length to 80
Using size 15
Set font to Uni2-TerminusBold28x14
setfont /live/locale/fonts/Uni2-TerminusBold28x14.psf -C /dev/console
New screen width 88
=== initrd bootstrap ==================================================
initrd init started at 0.04 seconds
Coldplug loop pid: 165
Welcome to antiX 17.b1 (keerfa) 64-bit!
  BusyBox v1.26.2 (2017-03-17 18:07:42 MDT) multi-call binary.
  ntfs-3g 2016.2.22AR.1 integrated FUSE 28
           initrd version: 8.01.02
             initrd built: Thu Jun 22 13:07:54 MDT 2017
             Total Memory:  2002 M
              Used Memory:    32 M
             Linux kernel: 4.10.5-antix.1-amd64-smp
             Screen width: 88
              Kernel arch: x86_64
                 Hardware: Dell Inc. Dell DXPDQRST
Current boot codes:
     conwidth=80 vga=794 tz=Etc/UTC quiet splash=v disable=lx

BitJam · posted: 2017-07-05 17:39

Thanks skidoo! That information is extremely useful.

For the most part, the conwidth= cheat seems to be working as expected. The font size gets larger when conwidth gets smaller. The largest font available is 32x16 so that limits how far we can go in reducing the console width.

The only anomaly I see (perhaps there are others you want to point out to me) is:

DUDE. PRIOR TO LAUNCHING THE CONSOLE-FONT-SELECT UTILITY
THE CONSOLE FONT IS STILL BEING DISPLAYED 6MM TALL.

As I said before, I'm not planning to do the conversions to make sense of this. If what you see on the screen does not match the numbers being reported by"stty size" and console-width-select, and if you want my help then I suggest you use fbgrab (or a camera) to take a screen shot and send it to me.

The /etc/default/console-setup file looks correct. It matches your tests that set the font to TerminusBold32x16. We write to this file (if needed) so your selection of font size carries over to the installed system.

Is there anything else in what you reported that you want to draw my attention to?

The numbers indicate to me that everything is working as expected, but maybe I missed something. The first time udev-rule-92 runs, the vga=xxx resolution is still being used but then it switches over to the max resolution the next time it runs (unless you used"nomodeset"). Sometimes the fbcondecor correction is being picked up (width = 1875) and sometimes it's not (width = 1920) but this is not a big change and there may be a good reason for it.

It's quite possible that the numbers don't match what you are seeing on the screen, a la your"DUDE" comment. Does that comment apply to most of your tests or only to the one where you added the comment?

Ah, I do see one bug. When you set conwidth=off then I end up using a 32x16 font instead of the 8x16 sized font specified in the default /etc/default/console-setup file. ***** sigh ***** I will fix this. It is sometimes difficult for me to emulate all of the Debian quirks. For now you can work around this by adding"kbvar=xxx" when you use"conwidth=off". This will add a second or so to the boot time.

It reminds me of when I needed to interface some of my equipment with custom hardware made by some French guys (this all happened a million years ago). I told them I could get it all working together if they told me which wire was negative and which one was positive. They told me. We put it all together and powered it up. There were sparks. There was smoke. The French guys said Oops, 'negative', 'positive' oh so sorry! This became a tag line around the shop whenever anything went wrong.

cyrilus31 · posted: 2017-07-05 18:27

You should know Frenchmen are unreliable ;p

skidoo · posted: 2017-07-05 19:51

can work around this by adding"kbvar=xxx" when you use"conwidth=off".

my honest reaction here is"Oh noez, even more proprietary bootline stuffs to fiddle with and keep track of? C'mon, really?"
I would rather (not yet tested) attempt to workaround by editing, then chmod -w /etc/default/console-setup
(as mentioned earlier, instead I'll probably just"go with the flow")

That bit (all uppercase) you quoted, I should have been more clear -- it was not associated with (only) that particular trial.
Exasperatingly, across those trials I didn't manage to find the elusive one magical permutation which had -- during the prior trials -- yielded a slightly smaller, 4.5mm tall, result.

Set aside what happens during init.
Regardless those numbers I copied down and reported, the bottom line is that the F4 + F7 controls are ineffectual in changing the console font seen when I press e.g. Ctrl+Alt+F6 to enter/change to a console.
What I'm continually seeing, across trials, seems to match FONTSIZE="32x16" as specified in /etc/default/console-setup
I provided timestamps in my report. The timestamps suggested to me that /etc/default/console-setup is being touched, but its FONTSIZE= line is not being changed.

Screenshot(s)... or it didn't happen?
Here ya go ~~ I'm attaching an imaginary screenshot for your inspection.
As you can see, when viewed at 1:1 original size, @96dpi... the fresh console is displaying a login prompt and the uppercase chars are 6mm tall.

eugen-b · posted: 2017-07-05 20:57

BitJam wrote:
eugen-b wrote:* The name cli-aptiX is so"crazy" that I memorized it wrong with apt-antiX.
Suggestions? I like what you remembered:"apt-antiX". It may cause less confusion even though it doesn't directly imply the program uses the command line.

As for using Synaptic as a model, part of that grew organically. We still offer the option to directly install packages without marking them first. Marking was added because it is much faster to mark N packages and then install them all at once rather than install N times. If installing N times was nearly as fast then marking wouldn't have been added.

Oh, I like the term TUI (terminal user interface, not the tourism company) and don't like the term CLI for terminal commands which contain several steps and menus. Consider as you wish names like antix-cc-tui or antix-apt-tui.

BitJam wrote: Thanks! If you have the time and inclination, please switch to framebuffer (Ctrl-Alt-F2, for example) and see if things work any better.

The primary purpose of antiX-cli-cc is to run in the virtual console, for people who are using the core system, for people who prefer working there, and for people who have run into a problem starting X. But it should still work smoothly in X so I thank you for the feedback.

I will and will report.
There is a userbase for terminal programs which let you select administrative tasks. The least thing which is good about them is that they save you some mouse clicks.