kernel 2.6.1-rc3: set consolefont in /etc/rc.conf. found out that the consolefont is only aplied to my first console. /etc/init.d/consolefont points partially to: * sys-apps/console-tools [ Masked ] Latest version available: 0.3.2 Latest version installed: 1.06-r1 From the thread in the forums: Possible solution: After looking inside the consolefont script i saw that there are two sections of setting the consolefont. The kbd section which is used in a normal gentoo setup and the console-tools section. The console-tools section provides a more elegant solution to this problem (consolechars which is apparently in the console-tools has a paramater to state the console: consolechars --tty). So i decided to emerge console-tools, but emerge says it is masked. So the only remaining question is why is console-tools masked, will it break my system or is it just that it can't co-exist with kbd. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: Brand new x86 and ~x86 installs behave the same way. Have not tested with kernels other than 2.6, but they seem to be OK. emerge info Portage 2.0.49-r20 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.2.3, glibc-2.3.2-r3, 2.6.1-rc2) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.1-rc2 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2000+ Gentoo Base System version 1.4.3.10 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -mmmx -m3dnow -msse -fstack-protector -Os -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer " CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="gcc3" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.1/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -mmmx -m3dnow -msse -fstack-protector -Os -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer " DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs ccache prelink sandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://www.mirror.ac.uk/sites/www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/ ftp://ftp.uninett.no/pub/linux/Gentoo" MAKEOPTS="-s -j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/home/apps/ebuilds" SYNC="rsync://rsync.nl.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X alsa apm arts avi berkdb cdr crypt cups encode esd exif foomaticdb gdbm gif gnome gpm gtk gtk2 imlib java jikes jpeg kde libg++ libwww mad mikmod motif mozsvg mpeg ncurses nls oggvorbis opengl oss pam pdflib perl pic png ppds python qt quicktime readline scanner sdl slang spell sse ssl svga tcltk tcpd truetype x86 xml2 xmms xv zlib"
According to package.mask, console-tools is masked because it is deprecated.
Baselayout 1.8.6.12-r3 AND kbd 1.08-r4 together fix the problem. I still consider this a bug, since the versions mentioned are not available for non "~x86" users.
I agree with additional comment #2. To that I'd like to add that even with baselayout 1.8.6.12-r3 and kbd 1.08-r4 the consolefont is not applied to vt10 (alt-f11) and vt11 (alt-f12 - the logger console). Perhaps this could be looked at in conjunction with this bug. I've changed /etc/inittab and /etc/init.d/bootsplash to provide 0-11 agettys (except 7).
To resolve the problem of no consolefont in tty11 and tty12 (last two) I made the following changes. Line 33 and line 60 in /etc/init.d/consolefont were changed to the line below. That fixed the problem although strictly speaking it only needs to be applied to line 33. for x in 1 2 3 4 5 6 8 9 10 11 12
I propose to change this part of the ebuild to: if [ -e /dev/.devfsd ] || [ -e /dev/.udev -a -d /dev/vc ] then for x in /dev/vc/* do /bin/setfont ${CONSOLEFONT} ${param} \ --tty=${x} >/dev/null retval=$? done else for x in /dev/tty* do /bin/setfont ${CONSOLEFONT} ${param} \ --tty=${x} >/dev/null retval=$? done fi This way we can have the appropriate font set on all consoles, even those beyond the 12th one. There are people who actually use these vc's and we since can easily support all consoles, why not do so?
Please continue discussion of vts 11+ in bug 39863
See also bug 39864 - changes needed to /etc/init.d/consolefont to ensure setting font on all vts still works after upgrade sys-apps/kbd-1.08-r5 to sys-apps/kbd-1.12 (referencing here as symptoms are identical but cause, solution are different).
This is fixed by latest baselayout (original problem).
