25.04.1 Boot Console Screen Resolution

[bweinel]

Greetings all,

I recently upgraded one of my TrueNAS systems from CORE (13.0-U6.7) to SCALE (25.04.1 Fangtooth.)

No issues encountered during the upgrade process. (Thanks iX developers!)

However, after completing the upgrade/install, I noticed that during the SCALE boot up sequence (which appears to be occurring post GRUB execution after the handoff to the linux O/S) that the boot console screen display resolution switches over to a much higher display resolution than it was originally when I was on CORE. Once there, it stays on this higher resolution output for the remainder of the start up sequence.

The increased boot console screen display resolution is causing an issue with my console display monitor (…which expects a lower resolution output for the console screen.)

Consequently, is there a way to tell Fangtooth to reduce the console display screen output resolution so it will be at the same resolution that it was in CORE?

All the best,
Bill

[MikeO3]

I don’t use SCALE so this is merely a suggestion. Update your grub with one of the following vga= options.

Color Depth	800x600	1024x768	1152x864	1280x1024	1600x1200
8 bit	vga=771	vga=773	vga=353	vga=775	vga=796
16 bit	vga=788	vga=791	vga=355	vga=794	vga=798
24 bit	vga=789	vga=792		vga=795	vga=799

Note that system updates will most likely overwrite any changes to the grub.cfg file. I see someone has devised a workaround which may work for you…

Reduce GRUB timeout in SCALE

Hey Arwen, your approach works very fine and for instance, to me I just put it down to 1 second in order to speed up boot speed because I dont let my NAS 24x7 online. I wanted to make the change without the init/shutdown script and the lack of an editor of GRUB options by TrueNas is what makes this all difficult, maybe someday they will add it into the GUI. I did in a different and crazy approach: Remount USR as RW sudo mount -o remount,rw,nodev,noatime,xattr,noacl,casesensitive boot-pool/…

[bweinel]

Thanks for the suggestion @MikeO3. I’ll give that a try and see if it resolves my issue. I use a rack mounted display console here for my TrueNAS CLI, so replacing it would be an expensive option.

All the best,
Bill

[bweinel]

Well… @MikeO3 's previous suggestion seemed likely to solve my issue. So I
found the original “/etc/default/grub.d/truenas.cfg” file as follows:

GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=“TrueNAS Scale”
GRUB_TIMEOUT=10
GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY=“true”
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“libata.allow_tpm=1 amd_iommu=on iommu=pt kvm_amd.npt=1 kvm_amd.avic=1 intel_iommu=on zfsforce=1 nvme_core.multipath=N”
GRUB_TERMINAL_INPUT=“console”
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT=“console”
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=“”

I remounted “boot-pool/ROOT/25.04.1/usr” as rw and edited “/usr/local/bin/truenas-grub.py” to add the following directives to the "config = " portion of the script:

    'GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768',
    'GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX="keep" ',

After saving truenas-grub.py and a reboot I found “/etc/default/grub.d/truenas.cfg” had added the additional directives as follows:

GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=“TrueNAS Scale”
GRUB_TIMEOUT=10
GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=“keep”
GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY=“true”
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“libata.allow_tpm=1 amd_iommu=on iommu=pt kvm_amd.npt=1 kvm_amd.avic=1 intel_iommu=on zfsforce=1 nvme_core.multipath=N”
GRUB_TERMINAL_INPUT=“console”
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT=“console”
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=“”

Looked good, so I then remounted the boot-pool as rw and ran “update-grub” to update grub boot loader… Rebooted again with high hopes and… no joy. I’ll have to investigate further to see where I’m going off the rails. <grrr…>

All the best,
Bill

[bweinel]

Ok here’s the addendum to the ‘set console display resolution’ investigation:

First, I found that ‘GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT=“console”’ needed to be set as ‘GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT=“gfxterm”’ to allow the grub GFX setups to have effect.

Afterwards… still ‘no cigar’ on getting the linux kernel to recognize the grub GFX settings as directed.

So I next spent some time looking through the framebuffer docs and kernel command line parameters at www.kernel.org. I found on [The kernel’s command-line parameters — The Linux Kernel documentation] that there is a [video=] switch available on every linux machine with a FrameBuffer. The config parameters are documented on [https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/fb/modedb.rst].

I then added the [video=1024x768@60me] switch to the default linux cmd line in the truenas-grub.py script and that solved the kernel issue.

The script generated truenas.cfg file in /etc/default/grub.d/ is now:

GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=“TrueNAS Scale”
GRUB_TIMEOUT=10
GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=“keep”
GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY=“true”
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“libata.allow_tpm=1 amd_iommu=on iommu=pt kvm_amd.npt=1 kvm_amd.avic=1 intel_iommu=on zfsforce=1 nvme_core.multipath=N video=1024x768@60me”
GRUB_TERMINAL_INPUT=“console”
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT=“gfxterm”
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=“”

I then did an “update-grub” to activate the changes in grub and we’re now in business.

I still need to rewrite the ‘advanced serial console’ portion of the truenas-grub.py script so that the serial portion runs correctly in “console” mode rather than “gfxterm” mode when serial output is selected (…though I don’t use a serial console here.) It would be nice to be able to input the console resolution parameters in the web UI and have it propagate over to the low level system. (Perhaps a feature request is up coming?)

I’m still not sure why the GRUB2 parameters devoted to this purpose (i.e.: GRUB_GFXMODE and GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX) aren’t passing gfx cfgs over to the kernel. However, it all works now and my console monitor is running at the correct screen resolution.

All the best,
Bill

[bweinel]

OK… So after some time, review, wading through incomplete documentation (which always seems to lag behind the actual software), and some head scratching; I believe that I have found a better way to accomplish console video output resolution changes.

By using the existing TrueNAS middleware “midclt call system.advanced.update” call from the TrueNAS shell, you can pass the additional Linux kernel parameter “video=HxVx@R” into the system “kernel_extra_options” variable, which will change the console resolution at the next boot up without resorting to changing any system scripts (…which is probably a process heavily frowned upon by the TrueNAS folks.)

So for my console video application the middleware shell command is:

midclt call system.advanced.update ‘{“kernel_extra_options”: “video=1024x768@60me”}’

Since the middleware facility to add additional kernel options already exists in TrueNAS, it seems that it would be a fairly straightforward process to add an item to the advanced options section of the GUI to send Linux boot parameters over to the kernel without having to access the shell. That maybe an item the developers might consider in the future.

All the best,
Bill