Sysinst screen too narrow error - any work around?

2b3a51

Hello All
I'm booting a Thinkpad T60 with 1024x768 screen and intel integrated graphics off a USB stick with the NetBSD 10 RC 5 iso.
The initial boot menu (where you choose [1] or [2] and so on) is fine at a sensible console font size. See image 1
Booting results in the usual messages, then the screen blanks for a second, and the kernel messages continue but with a much larger console font. The font looks to have been scaled up as the edges are noticeably jagged.
Proceeding with installation loads the sysinst TUI installer screens (blue background) but still with the scaled up font.
Attempting to start an installation results in the error message 'screen too narrow' see image 2.
Any workaround for this? Any parameter I can change from within the 'live' system to reduce the size of the console font?
Googling shows little.
Image 1
Image 2
Thanks all

rvp

2b3a51 There are a couple of things you can do:

Drop into th bootloader prompt, then use the gop or vesa commands to switch to a higher resolution.

If no resolution better than 1024x768 exists, quit the installer (either using Ctrl-C or the x menu-choice), then switch back to the smaller font. At the shell-prompt type:

wsconsctl -dw font=Boldface

Ctrl-D or exit to do back into the installer.

2b3a51

Hello rvp and all

The second command was successful thanks very much. I'm posting this from a fresh install of NetBSD on the T60 thinkpad.

Just for future searchers: the vesa command at first boot screen works and can be used to change the screen setting. However, after the screen blanks for a second or so during the boot sequence the large font appears. So the first suggestion won't get you past this particular error. I'm assuming that there is just a large font set as default somewhere.

nettester

As long as you manage to get a shell and everything else fails https://www.unitedbsd.com/d/771-netbsd-desktop-part-1-manual-netbsd-installation-on-gptuefi should be a pretty straight forward solution. At least it worked pretty much flawlessly for me.

2b3a51

I suspected that there would be a manual install method and was contemplating attempting to read the sysinst script source if all else failed.

I'm imagining that for a non-efi laptop (BIOS boot) I just don't make the efi partition. I'll do some reading around that.

nettester

2b3a51 Yeah, it's pretty simple too. You basically dd the the NetBSD mbr to the start of your disk and the loader to the beginning of your boot partition (which is probably the low level equivalent to the installboot -v /dev/rwd0b /mnt/usr/mdec/bootxx_ffsv2 command from the howto, so you don't really have to fiddle with dd for this). I don't have the actual file name for the mbr at hand currently but it should also be in /mnt/usr/mdec and the obvious 512 byte size should give it away easily.