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tty behaving weird - almost unusable
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hoegger
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 05, 2024 4:11 pm    Post subject: tty behaving weird - almost unusable Reply with quote

Hello folks!

Some time ago, the TTYs - [Alt] + [Ctrl] + [F1 ... F6] - stopped working as intended.

To be more specific, the TTY does not scroll at all. If I do for example a 'dmesg', I can see the first 25 lines and the cursor is off screen. Also 'less' does not scroll. To restore to a useful output, I need to eithe blindly type in 'clear' or switch to the GUI by hitting [Alt] + [Ctrl] + [F7] and then back to the TTY.

The text editor 'nano' behaves as expected.

I cannot pinpoint exactly when and for what reason this change happened, but I suspect it beeing a hardware change that I did a few month ago.
The system has changed from Z97(Gigabyte)/Xeon E3/GTX980ti to X99(MSI)/Xeon E5/RTX4060ti. Everything else is working well on my new setup.

To be honest, I do not know where and what to look for. Is there any known issue or spot to usually look at?

Any suggetions are much appreciated.
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szatox
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 05, 2024 4:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

AFAIK TTY scrollback buffer code is gone from kernel, so old behavior will not be coming back.

You can still run your programs inside screen though. Or tmux. Or any other alternative I'm not aware of.
Actually, screen is able to talk to a serial port directly, so you might even be able to completely replace agetty with screen in /etc/inittab. Haven't tried it, but it _should_ just work.


No idea what's wrong with less on your machine, it also should just work.
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hoegger
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 05, 2024 5:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

szatox wrote:
AFAIK TTY scrollback buffer code is gone from kernel, so old behavior will not be coming back. ...


It is not about scrolling back. The TTY does not scroll forward.

So if I "dmesg", I should see the tail end of the messages and the bash prompt, instead I am seeing the first few dmesg entries and the prompt is off screen.

Anyway, thanks for the reply.
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pingtoo
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 05, 2024 5:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

hoegger,

So on any one of tty, try stty -a. what is reported rows and columes?
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hoegger
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 05, 2024 9:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

pingtoo wrote:
hoegger,

So on any one of tty, try stty -a. what is reported rows and columes?

80 cols x 25 rows as it is passed on from the age of punch cards.


To communicate things clearer, I am quoting myself below:

hoegger wrote:
... To restore to a useful output, I need to either ... or switch to the GUI by hitting [Alt] + [Ctrl] + [F7] and then back to the TTY. ...


Last edited by hoegger on Thu Sep 05, 2024 9:34 pm; edited 1 time in total
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pingtoo
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 05, 2024 9:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

hoegger wrote:
pingtoo wrote:
hoegger,

So on any one of tty, try stty -a. what is reported rows and columes?


80 cols x 25 rows as it is passed on from the age of punch cards.


In this case I don't think I can be much of help. this seems to be console display driver problem.

if the program running on console understand tty setting it should respect that. and in your situation they driver set it to rather small value. (I am assume you monitor(s) have more than VGA capability) it is the driver resposiblilty to perform screen scrolling. I suggest you look into your kernel configuration. May be there something can shed some light.
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hoegger
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 05, 2024 9:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

pingtoo wrote:

... In this case I don't think I can be much of help. this seems to be console display driver problem.

if the program running on console understand tty setting it should respect that. and in your situation they driver set it to rather small value. (I am assume you monitor(s) have more than VGA capability) it is the driver resposiblilty to perform screen scrolling. I suggest you look into your kernel configuration. May be there something can shed some light.

The display can do 4K.


The TTY used to be text mode as it has been since the first IBM PCs and I have been always fine with that. If this causes problems, is there any way to change video modes for the TTYs?
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gentoo_ram
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 05, 2024 10:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Do you have appropriate frame buffer drivers installed for your video card/environment? If your console were fb then you could use frame buffer commands to change the settings. And you might not have weirdness when changing between consoles.
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