.\" @(#)man/man8/resizecons.8	1.0 Jan 17 12:04:28 MET 1995

.TH RESIZECONS 8 "17 Jan 1995" "Local" "Console Support"

.SH NAME

resizecons \- change kernel idea of the console size

.SH SYNOPSIS

.BI "resizecons " COLSxROWS

.br

.BI "resizecons -lines " ROWS

.SH DESCRIPTION

The

.I resizecons

command tries to change the videomode of the console.

There are several aspects to this: (a) the kernel must know about it,

(b) the hardware must know about it, (c) user programs must know

about it, (d) the console font may have to be adapted.

(a) The kernel is told about the change using the ioctl VT_RESIZE.

This causes the kernel to reallocate console screen memory for

all virtual consoles, and might fail if there is not enough memory.

(In that case, try to disallocate some virtual consoles first.)

If this ioctl succeeds, but a later step fails (e.g., because

you do not have root permissions), you may be left with a very messy

screen.

The most difficult part of this is (b), since it requires detailed

knowledge of the video card hardware, and the setting of numerous

registers. Only changing the number of rows is slightly easier, and 

.I resizecons

will try to do that itself, when given the

.I -lines

option. (Probably, root permission will be required.)

The command

.I "resizecons COLSxROWS"

will execute

.I "restoretextmode -r COLSxROWS"

(and hence requires that you have svgalib installed). Here COLSxROWS

is a file that was created earlier by

.I "restoretextmode -w COLSxROWS."

Again, either root permissions are required, or

.I restoretextmode

has to be suid root.

In order to deal with (c),

.I resizecons

does a `stty rows ROWS cols COLS' for each active console (in the

range tty0..tty15), and sends a SIGWINCH signal to

.I selection

if it finds the file /tmp/selection.pid.

Finally, (d) is dealt with by executing a

.I setfont

command. Most likely, the wrong font is loaded, and you may want to

do another

.I setfont

yourself afterwards.

.SH BUGS

.I resizecons

does not work on all hardware.

This command used to be called

.I resize,

but was renamed to avoid conflict with another command with the same name.

.SH "SEE ALSO"

.BR setfont (8),

.BR stty (1),

.BR selection (1),

.BR restoretextmode (8),

.BR disalloc (8)