≡ Menu

Adding arguments to CentOS boot

I’m running CentOS in a VirtualBox image (so I can play with Docker while using Windows, because … um… because). I don’t want X running; I am happiest with the command line for this application. So the screen resolution is really important to me; I don’t want an 80-by-25 console, I want something better.

It’s actually really easy, once you know how – that’s why I’m writing it up, so someone else can see exactly how I did it.

First, I needed to determine what values to use. You can work out potential values using hwinfo, which isn’t part of the CentOS repositories – you’ll have to install it from GhettoForge.

To be fair, I knew what values I wanted – I wanted mode 792, or 0x318.

(You should figure out what mode you want, then try it on your kernel before setting up the boot parameters. You have been warned.)

All I needed to do to set the boot param was:

sudo grubby --args=vga=792 --update-kernel=ALL

With that, when I booted CentOS, I get a larger console (but not a giant console) perfectly suited for what I wanted.

{ 0 comments… add one }

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.