Console fonts retention

HPmoss

Member
May 8, 2023
56
8
8
Online
www.google.co.uk
I am able to set console fonts using the following command, just like any other Debian/Ubuntu based distro:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

However the settings are lost after reboot. Any suggestions on how to make it permanent?
 
Last edited:
Is your setting being correctly saved (upon reboot) in /etc/default/console-setup ?
 
What does ls /etc/console-setup/ output
cached_ISO-8859-16.acm.gz compose.CP1251.inc compose.ISO-8859-14.inc compose.ISO-8859-8.inc
cached_ISO-8859-16_del.kmap.gz compose.CP1255.inc compose.ISO-8859-15.inc compose.ISO-8859-9.inc
cached_Lat15-Fixed16.psf.gz compose.CP1256.inc compose.ISO-8859-16.inc compose.KOI8-R.inc
cached_Lat15-Terminus28x14.psf.gz compose.GEORGIAN-ACADEMY.inc compose.ISO-8859-1.inc compose.KOI8-U.inc
cached_Lat15-Terminus32x16.psf.gz compose.GEORGIAN-PS.inc compose.ISO-8859-2.inc compose.TIS-620.inc
cached_setup_font.sh compose.IBM1133.inc compose.ISO-8859-3.inc compose.VISCII.inc
cached_setup_keyboard.sh compose.ISIRI-3342.inc compose.ISO-8859-4.inc remap.inc
cached_setup_terminal.sh compose.ISO-8859-10.inc compose.ISO-8859-5.inc
cached_UTF-8_del.kmap.gz compose.ISO-8859-11.inc compose.ISO-8859-6.inc
compose.ARMSCII-8.inc compose.ISO-8859-13.inc compose.ISO-8859-7.inc
 
Lat15-Terminus32x16.psf.gz
That appears to be your chosen font - BUT in the format of HeightxWidth.

So what you should do is:
Code:
nano /etc/default/console-setup

# Change the following line:
FONTSIZE="16x32"

# to:
FONTSIZE="32x16"

#save & exit

This IIRC was a bug that appeared years ago but seems to have resurfaced (assuming it fixes your problem!).
 
No joy. Still the same.
Do note even without the change, it works well the first time but defaults back to smallest font upon reboot. So it does not make any difference in my case if i use FONTSIZE="32x16" or other one.
 
Last edited:
Nope. I will give it a try

aaaand ... running setupcon sets up the font correctly and after reboot we are back to square one!
I tried both setupcon and setupcon --save
 
Last edited:
Disregard the following if the above fixes the issue.


Upon searching your issue, I found this thread - which may be relevant.

If in fact the workaround in this post of that thread works, a bug-report should probably be filed.
 
One other thing for clarification:

I see in your OP:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup
I'm assuming that "sudo" is just a reference to general Debian/Ubuntu but was not used in Proxmox - which is root all round.
 
the workaround in the post is to restart console-setup daemon. As I see it, in my system that is already running.
Did you try it? If I understand that quoted post correctly - it is a question of timing, so that the poster is trying to get that daemon to start earlier/later.


aaaand ... running setupcon sets up the font correctly
So maybe setup that cron job using the setupcon command.

In all events, it looks like this is a possible bug. Probably should be tested on a regular Debian 12 OS.
 
Finally, setting-up that cron job using the setupcon command fixed the issue. It may not be elegant solution and yes there's possibly a bug in the system but I got the solution I wanted. Many thanks!

For anyone else looking for solution:

1. Edit cronjob using crontab -e
2. Insert this line: @reboot /usr/bin/setupcon
3. Save and reboot
 
  • Like
Reactions: Kingneutron
Just FYI, I have a bash script in /root/bin/fixfont that sets the Debian console font for me if I don't like it, on the fly (will not survive reboot, but good for ad-hoc console sessions)

cd /usr/share/consolefonts
setfont Lat15-Fixed13 # .psf.gz

[ "$1" = "1" ] && setfont Lat15-Fixed16 # 4k tv - slt smaller but still readable
[ "$1" = "2" ] && setfont Lat15-Terminus12x6 # beelink portable display maxres still readable