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1280×800 Console Framebuffer in Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron.

I finally figured out how to fix the 1280×400 framebuffer issue I had. Once upon a time I had fixed this, but I needed to fix it again after the upgrade. This is allows me to have terminals (ctrl+alt+F1-F6) that display at a full 1280×800. I like to keep a “top” session running in tty1 and if you have all that space you can fit a lot more on the screen. Plus its easier on the eyes if you need to use the standard console.

This works on my Toshiba M45-S2692 laptop running Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron:

PLEASE BACK UP ALL THE FILES YOU ARE ABOUT TO EDIT!

1. Open “/etc/modules” in gedit with root access.

2. Add two lines to the end. One saying “fbcon” and another saying “vesafb”.

3. Save “/etc/modules”

4. Open “/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer” in gedit with root access.

5. Comment out (put a # in front of) “vesafb” in the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer

6. Save “/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer”

7. Open “/boot/grub/menu.lst” in gedit with root access.

8. Add “vga=865″ to the end of the kernel line in your Ubuntu entry so it looks something like this:

title        Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic
root        (hd0,1)
kernel        /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=UUID=f817e879-773c-40c0-9ea5-7e142bbc52ff ro quiet splash vga=865
initrd        /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic
quiet

9. Save “/boot/grub/menu.lst”

10. Reboot your PC.

Now when you need to do something small, but don’t want to log in to Gnome, you can open a console terminal and have a 3733t looking console. It’s really sweet.