Re: "vidcontrol -i mode" shows no output except header (in search of smaller console font)

> On 27. Feb 2022, at 23:36, Michael Schuster <michaelsprivate@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm trying to get a smaller font in my text-consoles (using vt) on my Ryzen 4700 and Vega10 Renoir - based laptop with a fresh install of FreeBSD CURRENT from last week. 
> 
> My research led me to believe that using vidcontrol would help me here, but however I do try, "vidcontrol -i mode" prints nothing except the header line, and other "vidcontrol" subcommands give me "Inappropriate ioctl for device".
> 
> I tried a few things
> - switched to sc via setting "kern.vty=sc" in /boot/loader.conf, this caused a hang on reboot
> - setting "hw.vga.textmode" to 1
> - "kldload vesa"
> ... and probably a few other things I now forget, all to no effect - I still get nothing.
> 
> I then performed an update from a freshly 'git pulled' source today (kernel, world, drm-devel-kmod), a simple "vidcontrol" test still shows the same.
> 
> I know it can work because I had a smaller font before I re-installed over the previous installation (which originally came from ghostbsd in Aug 2020), so - I assume - it can't be rocket science :-)
> I'd appreciate further hints/pointers/RTFMs (though I've tried quite a few of those).
> 

UEFI or BIOS setup? With UEFI, sc and hw.vga.textmode has no effect. With UEFI or BIOS+hw.vga.textmode=0, you can set screen.font variable (empty value will cause the values list to be printed), or use loadfont command with your custom font file (created with vtfontcvt).

rgds,
toomas