Tiny console text on 4k monitor

[silke]

Though most of daily work can be done from the web interface, sometimes it is still necessary to login at the console. But I find it very difficult to read anything. I guess the reason is my 4k monitor but living in 2025 I also guess this is not so uncommon these days. Is there anything I can do to increase the text size?
The grub boot menu shows big letters but as soon as the login prompt appears, it is very tiny.

 

[LnxBil]

If you're talking about the console on the PVE GUI, you just need to change the guest display settings. Please refer to the guest OS handbook in order to do that. Most of the time it's the font size for Linux terminal or the DPI setting in the window manager.

If that does not work, you can also enable scaling for the noVNC console in order to just scale up the window.

 

[silke]

No, I am talking about the physical console. The prompt that says where to find the web GUI -- not the console within the GUI and not guest systems.
The problem is the display you get if you start the machine, plug a monitor to it and want to read what is displayed there.
If I understand it right, I have to somehow change the kernel command line but did not yet find a working setting -- or tried the wrong config file.

 

[leesteken]

I don't know if your Proxmox installation uses GRUB or systemd-boot but maybe try adding something like this to the kernel parameters (since this is not Proxmox specific): https://thelinuxcode.com/set_screen_resolution_linux_kernel_boot/

EDIT: Or change the font (size): https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Kernel_mode_setting#My_fonts_are_too_tiny

 

[Impact]

Perhaps this can also be helpful.

 

[Kingneutron]

https://github.com/kneutron/ansitest/blob/master/fix-console-resolution.sh

https://github.com/kneutron/ansitest/blob/master/fixfont

cd /usr/share/consolefonts
setfont Lat15-Fixed16 # works for my 4k tv; ls in this dir to see available fonts for Debian

 

[silke]

https://github.com/kneutron/ansitest/blob/master/fix-console-resolution.sh

https://github.com/kneutron/ansitest/blob/master/fixfont

cd /usr/share/consolefonts
setfont Lat15-Fixed16 # works for my 4k tv; ls in this dir to see available fonts for Debian

Thanks, looks promising. How do you call these scripts? crontab? Manually after login?

After some more Google I also found another solution following this post: https://unix.stackexchange.com/ques...e-most-basic-text-console-video-mode-on-linux
Only the update-grub command gave a warning, so I also gave a "proxmox-boot-tool refresh" just to be sure. After that I get indeed a readable display.

 

[silke]

Perhaps this can also be helpful.

Thanks. Looks for me like this is for a VM console but I am looking for a solution for the host console. But I guess it also works similar to the stackexchange answer I found (see my last post) on the host.

 

[Kingneutron]

Thanks, looks promising. How do you call these scripts? crontab? Manually after login?

After some more Google I also found another solution following this post: https://unix.stackexchange.com/ques...e-most-basic-text-console-video-mode-on-linux
Only the update-grub command gave a warning, so I also gave a "proxmox-boot-tool refresh" just to be sure. After that I get indeed a readable display.

You can put the scripts in /root/bin or /usr/local/bin and call them as-needed from the text consoles. Might be able to have a different font size on e.g. tty2 but I haven't tested it

You can issue the setfont command if you know the font filename. The script just makes it easier by passing 1, 2, etc as an argument to select the font size based on predetermined code

 

[LnxBil]

You can also look into the default console font via dpkg-reconfigure console-setup. This may not be large enough depending on your setup, yet it may also just work. This is persistent over reboots.