Boot/console question.

[Benjamin Scott]

On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 1:30 PM, Ken D'Ambrosio <ken at jots.org> wrote:
> I've always managed to work past this, but I'm damn curious to know if it
> can be avoided entirely, e.g., if one of the "vga=ask" options might help
> out, or somesuch.

  The initscripts of modern distros all seem to reset the video mode
and/or font during boot.  I suspect it's something to do with
i18n/Unicode support.  So a kernel parameter won't help because the
initscripts come after.

  One thing you can do during investigation is add the following on
the boot command line:

	init=/bin/sh

That will start a plain shell as the initial program, bypassing the
initscripts completely.  Be warned that the resulting environment is
extremely primitive by modern standards.  For example, you will need
to set PATH and mount your filesystems "by hand".  For shutdown, you
need to unmount/re-mount-read-only by hand as well.

-- Ben