resizecons(8) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

RESIZECONS(8)            System Manager's Manual           RESIZECONS(8)

NAME         top

       resizecons - change kernel idea of the console size

SYNOPSIS         top

       resizecons COLSxROWS
       resizecons -lines ROWS

DESCRIPTION         top

       The resizecons command tries to change the videomode of the
       console.  There are several aspects to this: (a) the kernel must
       know about it, (b) the hardware must know about it, (c) user
       programs must know about it, (d) the console font may have to be
       adapted.

       (a) The kernel is told about the change using the ioctl
       VT_RESIZE.  This causes the kernel to reallocate console screen
       memory for all virtual consoles, and might fail if there is not
       enough memory.  (In that case, try to disallocate some virtual
       consoles first.)  If this ioctl succeeds, but a later step fails
       (e.g., because you do not have root permissions), you may be left
       with a very messy screen.

       The most difficult part of this is (b), since it requires
       detailed knowledge of the video card hardware, and the setting of
       numerous registers. Only changing the number of rows is slightly
       easier, and resizecons will try to do that itself, when given the
       -lines option. (Probably, root permission will be required.)  The
       command resizecons COLSxROWS will execute restoretextmode -r
       COLSxROWS (and hence requires that you have svgalib installed).
       Here COLSxROWS is a file that was created earlier by
       restoretextmode -w COLSxROWS.  Again, either root permissions are
       required, or restoretextmode has to be suid root.

       In order to deal with (c), resizecons does a `stty rows ROWS cols
       COLS' for each active console (in the range tty0..tty15), and
       sends a SIGWINCH signal to selection if it finds the file
       /tmp/selection.pid.

       Finally, (d) is dealt with by executing a setfont command. Most
       likely, the wrong font is loaded, and you may want to do another
       setfont yourself afterwards.

BUGS         top

       resizecons does not work on all hardware.  This command used to
       be called resize, but was renamed to avoid conflict with another
       command with the same name.

SEE ALSO         top

       setfont(8), stty(1), selection(1), restoretextmode(8),
       disalloc(8)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the kbd (Linux keyboard tools) project.
       Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://www.kbd-project.org/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this
       manual page, send it to kbd@lists.altlinux.org.  This page was
       obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/legionus/kbd.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-12-13.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

kbd                            17 Jan 1995                 RESIZECONS(8)

Pages that refer to this page: ioctl_console(2)console_codes(4)