Hi Yasha Karant!

 On 2012.01.14 at 10:25:43 -0800, Yasha Karant wrote next:

> At present, the only means I have found to force SL 6.x to display
> the actual steps during the boot of SL 6.x is to hit the ESC key;
> otherwise, only a time changing indicator appears, but no actual
> information. However, even so displaying, I have still have the
> issue below.
> 
> The font SL 6.x uses is too small on some platforms.  What controls
> this font size:  a configuration file in SL, a setting in either the
> BIOS or the bootloader (e.g. grub) -- both of which have
> relinquished control to SL at this stage of the boot -- or something
> else, perhaps hard compiled that cannot be changed without
> recompilation?
> 
> I fully understand that this may be set to be identical to TUV and
> other EL clones.  I do not care.  Just as ELRepo or SL additions
> provide (some) functionalities beyond those of TUV, I would like to
> modify this.

It's two thing that control it: framebuffer resolution and actual font
size.
To get bigger font, you can either increase font size or reduce
resolution.
Font is defined in /etc/sysconfig/i18n with SYSFONT directive; for
example, mine is 8x16 font "cyr-sun16.psuf.gz". You can look at
/lib/kbd/consolefonts for full list of fonts.
Example of bigger font is sun12x22.psfu.gz

Also, SYSFONT is passed as kernel parameter from grub; that's font used
by kernel before i18n file is parsed and font is changed. For
consistency, you probably should change SYSFONT= directive in
/boot/grub/grub.conf too.


To reduce framebuffer resolution, specify different video= option as
kernel parameter from grub. Default varies depending on video card and
monitor; it can be 1024x768, 1600x900 or anything else. Try
video=800x600 for example. You might need to specify framebuffer driver,
too, like video=radeonfb:800x600 or video=radeondrmfb:800x600 etc

You can find try to find your current framebuffer driver by executing
something like "dmesg|grep fbcon" after boot. It really is a complicated
topic as exact name can depend on KMS / nomodeset kernel options and so
on. Documentation/fb/modedb.txt from kernel-doc package explains video=
option, as for mode setting & fb driver stuff, I don't really know
precise documentation, so google is your friend, if you have to venture
there..



-- 

Vladimir