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Is there a way to change the screen resolution of the console after the system has been booted? I've seen plenty on setting the vga= line in the boot and in the grub config but I'd like to be able to change it after I login instead. This would be logging into the console, not through SSH.

in the old days of DOS I would have just used "mode" and changed it. What's the unix counterpart?

Mech
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In newer kernels, the ability to set vga= on the kernel line is disappearing anyway. It's gone for Intel video with the latest kernel/X11 releases already. When these will show up in Ubuntu I don't know.

You're talking the resolution in the console, right? Not the resolution inside X? If the former, I'm not sure it can be done. I've never seen anyone talk about doing it. If the latter, different desktop environments provide control panels for doing this, so I surmise it is possible. :-) You should say more about what the constraints are.

dubiousjim
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    hey, I don't think that's true that it can't be changed. As described in http://askubuntu.com/questions/176306/how-to-set-the-screen-resolution-of-the-virtual-console I've changed the virtual console resolution of Ubuntu 12.04 several times, although I'm not sure how I'm doing it (seems to be a side effect of `arandr`. – isomorphismes Aug 16 '12 at 23:26
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Have you taken a look at resizecons? Also, see this.

Dennis Williamson
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    `resizecons` [is missing](https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/foundations-bugs/2011-May/000730.html) from Ubuntu 12.04. (Not that @Mech Software is necssarily using Ubuntu, but a future googler like me might be.) – isomorphismes Aug 17 '12 at 02:57
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    @isomorphismes: the odd thing is that there is still a `man` page around for `resizecons` as of Ubuntu 12.04.2. But no such program, of course. And thanks for your comment, I happened to be one of those future googlers ;) – 0xC0000022L Apr 04 '13 at 18:04
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    @0xC0000022L: `resizecons` is part of the `kbd` package and is shown in the 12.04 (Precise) file list at http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/i386/kbd/filelist for i386 (32 bit), but not in the list for AMD64 (64 bit) at http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/amd64/kbd/filelist. The same is true for 12.10 (Quantal). – Dennis Williamson Apr 04 '13 at 19:27
  • @DennisWilliamson: yep, saw it in the linked bug (linked from the mailing list post linked here). Thanks. – 0xC0000022L Apr 04 '13 at 19:50