Drinkable Chicken

Thanks to everybody who replied to my previous inquiry about booting Ubuntu in text mode. Eventually, I managed to figure out a solution, sort of, after combining several of the tips.

Much of the advice was sound but didn’t really apply in one way or another. For example, Ubuntu 11.04 uses GRUB2, which apparently differs significantly from the old GRUB. This means that many of the proposed solutions didn’t apply (unless I had reinstalled using the old GRUB, I don’t know). There’s no /etc/inittab, no menu.lst, editing the boot menu works differently, the vga= parameter is no longer supported, etc.

The Ctrl-Alt-F1 (etc) suggestions sort of worked, but gave me the same small font, plus I really wanted the system to *start up* in text mode.

The reason I chose Ubuntu in the first place was because it’s popular.  My Secret Project (oh, the suspense ;-) involves building something on top of an Unixoid system, and Ubuntu seemed like a logical choice; it’s very actively developed, has drivers for a lot of hardware, etc. But on second thought, it might not have been a good choice for my purposes. Ubuntu strives to provide a smooth, user-friendly experience, which implies a desktop GUI. Support for terminals that boot up in text mode is, understandably, not their first priority.

However, there *are* Linuxen with different priorities. As reader “Kerobaros” pointed out in a comment, ArchLinux may be a better choice. So after a lot of fruitless experimenting with all the advice mentioned in the other comments, I decided, what the heck, I’ll give it a try. (It uses the old GRUB, so that made things easier as well.)

At first it did the same thing as Ubuntu: I could set the VGA mode/resolution in GRUB, and it would start up using that mode, but at some point during the booting process the screen would fall back to the 1024×768-based font. (I figure most people would actually prefer that font, since it’s much more crisp, and more text is visible on the screen, but for my old eyes, it’s not so good.)

Then eventually I read somewhere that this behavior is something that newer kernels do, and that the nomodeset option stops it from happening. It didn’t actually do that on Ubuntu 11.04, but it did on ArchLinux. So now I finally have a Linux install that sets the right font (80×25) and *keeps* it. ^_^

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I did offer a bounty to the person who could solve this problem. Oddly enough, the “golden tip” turned out to be the suggestion to use Arch Linux. Several people mentioned “nomodeset”, and while it didn’t have the desired effect on Ubuntu, it does work properly with Arch. Given that I couldn’t get any of the other tips to work with Ubuntu 11 at all, I think that Kerobaros should get his pick of the prizes, if he/she wishes.

(Thanks to everybody who replied. I still don’t have a working solution yet I eventually managed to find a configuration that works for my purposes, combining some of the advice; more about this in a followup post.)

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OK, here’s an interesting problem for all you Linux masters/journeymen (or maybe even beginners) out there. The whole story is a bit too long to explain it on IRC or somesuch, so I’m doing it here. I’m also offering a bounty/reward; see below.

But first things first. Last week I got an ASUS 1018P. It’s a 10″ netbook that I specifically got to do a certain Project that I have been thinking about for a while now. It currently has Ubuntu 11.04 desktop on it (most attempts to install other versions of Linux failed, but that doesn’t matter right now). In GUI mode, everything seems to work fine; graphics are correct (it’s a widescreen), wireless is instantly recognized, sound works, etc. No problems there.

Now, what I want, is apparently rather unusual in this day and age. You know how in the old days of MS-DOS (or early Linuxen) the computer would boot, and you would get a 80×25 text screen? Well, that’s basically what I want here. I want an option in my boot menu that does just that; instead of booting into the GUI, it shows you a login prompt in 80×25 text mode, and stays there after logging in.

Sounds simple? Not for me. I know a little about Linux, but not enough to pull it all off, because I run into too many problems that I don’t know how to fix. The way I understand it, the new menu option must boot in runlevel 3, and must use a screen resolution lower than 1024×768 (currently it shows a font with more columns/rows than 80×25, which makes the text unpleasantly small on the 10″ screen).

(The machine is capable of showing 80×25, by the way; it uses it for the BIOS screen, and it also uses it for certain other Linux installations, like Gentoo, so I know it works. It’s just that Ubuntu insists on switching to a higher resolution with a smaller font.)

If you know how to fix this, I would like to hear from you. ^_^ Please leave comments either below, or via email (zephyrfalcon@gmail.com). Assume that I am not very smart and don’t know much about Linux. ;-) In other words, I would need some hand-holding, rather than vague advice.

The first reader to come up with an acceptable solution can pick a “prize” from the list below. To summarize, this is what I need:

• extra option in GRUB2 boot menu
• boot in runlevel 3 (necessary for text mode, I think, but feel free to correct me)
• set screen to a lower resolution, e.g. 640×480 or 800×600, which allows for 80×25 text
• ideally, the process should be reproducible on other netbooks as well (assuming Ubuntu)
• BONUS points if everything else still works in text mode (sound, wireless, etc)
• BONUS points if it’s still possible to switch to a graphics mode using one library or another, and back to text mode (not a GUI, I’m more thinking along the lines of SDL here, etc), and you can tell me a bit about how to do this

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Now for the rewards. I don’t have money to offer, but I do have a bunch of stuff laying around that I don’t use, and that might be of interest to people. I will send it to you free of charge. NOTE: Sorry, but I can only send it to you if you are in the US or Canada; otherwise the shipping costs will get a little too unwieldy. :( If you are from another country, maybe we can make other arrangements, e.g. I could write some Python code for you, or something.

Books:

• The Little Lisper, Third Edition
• Ada 95 Problem Solving and Program Design (Feldman, Koffman)
• Programming in Ada 95 (Barnes)
• Unix Ada Programming (Gehani)
• Data Structures and Algorithms: An Object-Oriented Approach Using Ada 95 (Beidler)
• Miranda: The Craft of Functional Programming (Thompson)
• Flex 3: A beginner’s guide (Davis, Phillips)
• The Art of Computer Programming vol. 1: Fundamental Algorithms, Second Edition (Knuth)
• Dreaming in Code (Rosenberg)
• In The Land of Invented Languages (Okrent)
• Twisty Little Passages (Montfort)
• Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals (Salen, Zimmerman)
• The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology (Salen, Zimmerman)
• Photoshop CS Bible (McClelland)
• Magic: The Puzzling (Rosewater)

If none of these are to your liking, I also have a bunch of Magic cards (mostly older ones), fantasy books, video games, disassembled Zoids, etc. Oh, and you get to pick more items if you satisfy the “bonus” conditions listed. :)

Thanks in advance…

–Hans who should really turn in his hacker’s license :(

(This is one of those posts written in anger and self-pity, so feel free to skip.)

The other day I got my grubby hands on a new netbook… an Asus 1018P. I have been planning (yet another) Secret Project for a while, and it requires a Linux that runs in text mode. It seemed like a good idea to have a small, dedicated machine for this.

It originally came with Windows 7 Starter, which is basically useless. But, since it has a 250 Gb hard drive, I optimistically figured, that I could run multiple operating systems on it. For example, keep Windows 7, then Ubuntu 11.04 desktop, Ubuntu 11.04 in text mode, and something experimental, e.g. Haiku.

Ubuntu 11.04 desktop edition installed and worked fine. Then the trouble began. Installing another Ubuntu in text mode did work as well, except it refused to boot up. So I could boot into Windows, or Ubuntu with GUI, but not the text mode Ubuntu. It would just sit there with a blinking cursor, doing nothing.

Haiku wasn’t a success either; it didn’t recognize the widescreen, so it looked silly, and after installation it didn’t show up in the boot menu. Apparently there are fixes for this, but since it wasn’t my #1 priority, I decided to skip it.

So, new plan: instead of Ubuntu I would install Linux Mint 11 for the desktop, and Gentoo for the text mode version. Ugh. Linux Mint wouldn’t even boot properly from the CD. It would show some text and then just stop. No installation at all. Gentoo did a better job, I worked through the manual step by step, until I somehow ran into a compilation error while building the kernel (something to do with firmware, I should have written it down). Trying it again, I got a different error, more cryptical. In any case, it refused to compile. I tried to do manual config instead of using genkernel; then it didn’t even boot.

At this point I was ready to just use the whole hard drive for one operating system instead of juggling several. Tried Debian next; that was even more fun, since its installer somehow didn’t recognize the CD-ROM (yes, the same CD-ROM that it was booting from). Ubuntu Server does the same thing, by the way.

OK, so four days later, I still don’t have a text-mode Linux installed. I really don’t understand why it’s giving me such a hard time. The machine itself seems fine. But I didn’t really expect to have so much trouble installing Linux in 2011.

At least I’m not running out of options; there’s still Arch Linux, Red Hat, Mandriva, Slackware, SUSE, … :-) And then there’s the BSDs… I’m not married to a specific OS, I just wanted to pick something that was actively developed and easy to install. Yeah, so much for that.

Maybe I’ll try Gentoo again sometime and report the error… or maybe I’ll get lucky and a new version will be out soon, that happens to fix the problem.

My Secret Project is not off to a good start, though. Step 1 would be, “install a Linux in text mode”… if it’s this hard, I will never get anybody else to use the project. :-/

Anyway, if you know of a Linux that does flourish in text mode, even on obscure netbooks, feel free to leave a comment.

Update #1: More failures from Haiku alpha 3 (gets past the intro screen, then does nothing) and Dragonfly BSD (is installed but some daemon is messed up, and I don’t know how to fix it, which admittedly isn’t Dragonfly’s fault, but still). I should probably take a break and then try what the comments below suggested; I can install e.g. Ubuntu with GUI, then play with the runlevel. I do wish Gentoo worked though… maybe I can do the same with its live CD?

Update #2 (more of a side note actually): As it turns out, in situations like this. it’s very useful to have a little stack of CD-RWs laying around. :) The OS doesn’t install or just plain sucks? No problem, wipe it off the CD and install a new ISO.

Update #3. I’m giving up. This should be the simplest thing to do… install a Linux and be greeted by a 80×25 text mode screen after booting. You know, like we did 20 years ago? And for some reason I just can’t get it done. Resolution is wrong, system won’t boot in runlevel 3… and that is just for the few Linux versions that can be properly installed at all on this thing. I’ve wasted a week on this, I think that’s enough.