How do I change terminal to 80x24

[JRV]

When I press <CTRL>-<ALT>-<F1> to go to a full screen terminal the text is very small and hard to read.
How do I change it to 80x24 with large type?

[sudodus]

When I press <CTRL>-<ALT>-<F1> to go to a full screen terminal the text is very small and hard to read.
How do I change it to 80x24 with large type?

One way is explained in this link

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Displays#Setting_Menu_Font_Colors

Changing Menu Resolutions

If the user wishes to change the resolution of the GRUB 2 screen for image enhancement or general font size changes:

1. Set the desired resolution in /etc/default/grub
   
   • Change the value of GRUB_GFXMODE= (Example: GRUB_GFXMODE=800x600)
   • If unsure of what resolutions are available to GRUB 2 they can be displayed by typing vbeinfo in the GRUB 2 command line. The command line is accessed by typing "c" when the main GRUB 2 menu screen is displayed.
   
   
2. Select an image of the same proportions.
   
   • GRUB 1.99 - Place the image in the grub folder or add a GRUB_BACKGROUND entry in /etc/default/grub
   • GRUB 1.98 - Change the value of WALLPAPER in /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme
   • GRUB 1.99 - Place the image in the grub folder or add a GRUB_BACKGROUND= entry in /etc/default/grub
   
   
   
   • If an image of the correct size is not used, the menu will not be positioned correctly.
   • Use the image editor of your choice to create/resize an image to the correct size.
   • The user may be able to view the image size via Properties in a file browser (check the Properties Image tab in Nautilus).
   
   
3. Run update-grub to update GRUB 2

Creating User Splash Images

GRUB 2's splash image management makes it easy to use a wide variety of splash images.

Resolution Settings

The images in the grub2-splashimages package are primarily 640x480 images.
GRUB 2 looks for a resolution setting in /etc/default/grub. If uncommented, the resolution is determined by this line:

• GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

To make the change in /etc/default/grub work, you need to finish with the command

sudo update-grub

and it will work after the next reboot.

[JRV]

Grub is set the way I want it.
I want to change the full screen terminal I get when I press <CTRL>-<ALT>-<F1>.

[steeldriver]

Grub is set the way I want it.
I want to change the full screen terminal I get when I press <CTRL>-<ALT>-<F1>.

The virtual terminals get their mode from grub though - e.g. to get the desired (high) resolution VTs for my laptop (which is a 16:10 display) I have

GRUB_GFXMODE=1680x1050
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD=keep

For low res you would probably want something like 800x600 - but technically you should drop to the grub prompt at boot time and run 'vbeinfo' to see the supported modes, especially if you have a nonstandard aspect ratio like mine

[sudodus]

The virtual terminals get their mode from grub though - e.g. to get the desired (high) resolution VTs for my laptop (which is a 16:10 display) I have

GRUB_GFXMODE=1680x1050
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD=keep

For low res you would probably want something like 800x600 - but technically you should drop to the grub prompt at boot time and run 'vbeinfo' to see the supported modes, especially if you have a nonstandard aspect ratio like mine

+1
Try it, and you will see that it works

The text screen mode uses the graphics mode set by grub. There might be advanced methods to add other fonts and font sizes keeping the grub graphics mode, that I don't know, but other people might show for us.

I have used
GRUB_GFXMODE=800x600x32
and now I'm using
GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768x16
in a computer connected to a 1920x1080 screen,
and this lets me see more and longer lines, when running in text mode compared to the default 80x25 lines that you get with
GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

[sudodus]

There might be advanced methods to add other fonts and font sizes keeping the grub graphics mode, that I don't know, but other people might show for us.

I found setfont at http://askubuntu.com/questions/29328/how-do-i-increase-the-text-size-of-the-text-on-a-console

and suggest that you change font size according to these examples, which gives you a certain flexibility within the grub graphics mode between 13 (smallest) and 18 (largest) font size.

examples:

setfont Uni2-Terminus16
setfont Uni2-Fixed18
setfont Uni2-Fixed13

ls -l  /usr/share/consolefonts|grep Uni|grep Fixed
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  4515 apr 19  2012 Uni1-Fixed15.psf.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  4364 apr 19  2012 Uni1-Fixed16.psf.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  3985 apr 19  2012 Uni2-Fixed13.psf.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  4216 apr 19  2012 Uni2-Fixed14.psf.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  4168 apr 19  2012 Uni2-Fixed15.psf.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  4112 apr 19  2012 Uni2-Fixed16.psf.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  4198 apr 19  2012 Uni2-Fixed18.psf.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  3982 apr 19  2012 Uni3-Fixed13.psf.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  4224 apr 19  2012 Uni3-Fixed14.psf.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  4146 apr 19  2012 Uni3-Fixed15.psf.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  4076 apr 19  2012 Uni3-Fixed16.psf.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  4204 apr 19  2012 Uni3-Fixed18.psf.gz

[schragge]

If you don't need the full character repertoire of Fixed fonts, try Terminus. It's a very good legible console font and is available in sizes up to 32x16. It contains glyphs for most Latin scripts, as well as Greek and Cyrillic. See comments in /etc/default/console-setup

[JRV]

Thank you, but that didn't do it.
Ubuntu 12.10 64 bit 1280x1024 monitor.
Here is my /etc/default/grub file:

# If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update
# /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
# For full documentation of the options in this file, see:
#   info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration'

GRUB_DEFAULT="0"
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT="0"
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET="true"
GRUB_TIMEOUT="10"
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

# Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs
# This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains
# the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...)
#GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef"

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
#GRUB_TERMINAL="console"

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'
GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD=keep

# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID="true"

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"

# Uncomment to get a beep at grub start
#GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1"

export GRUB_COLOR_NORMAL="yellow/black"
export GRUB_COLOR_HIGHLIGHT="light-cyan/black"
export GRUB_MENU_PICTURE="/home/jack/Pictures/Wallpaper/Fire.jpg"

[sudodus]

Did you remember to run

sudo update-grub

and

sudo reboot

[JRV]

Did you remember to run

sudo update-grub

and

sudo reboot

Yes